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Four

The War of the Holy Spirit Mobile Forces

Since the First World War at the latest, the war economy has become an essential part of the Western world’s economy as such and has thus altered the relationship between war and politics (Virilio and Lotringer, 1984:49ff.). If Clausewitz could still define war as the continuation of politics by other means, politics gradually receded into the background as the destructive power of armaments increased. In recent decades, the technical development of weapons has reached the point where it is no longer possible to imagine a political goal commensurate with the potential for annihilation (Arendt, 1985:7). The perfection of the means of violence is on the point of precluding its goal, the waging of war (ibid:9). But unfortunately, the development of the means of destruction has not led to an end to wars. Today, wars take place because the enormous war economy necessitates the testing of new and the scrapping of old weapons technologies (Theweleit, 1991:191ff.). With the introduction of a new generation of electronic weapons in the Western industrial countries, trade in and sales of the old, now technologically obsolete weapons to the so-called Third World has increased. These arms exports, the collapse of the socialist bloc in Eastern Europe and thus the end of the Cold War’s precarious balance of power, the Bretton Woods institutions’ prescription of democratization in many states, and the formation of resistance movements just as ‘predatory’ as the ‘predatory’ states they oppose (cf. Darbon, 1990) have all contributed to an increase in wars in Africa: in Somalia, Liberia, the former Zaïre, Rwanda, and Uganda.

Political scientists and developmental sociologists primarily – and less so anthropologists – attempted to grapple with the new conditions in Africa and to do justice to them in their scientific discourses. With few exceptions,¹ by contrast, anthropologists excluded war from their theoretical discussion (cf. Clastres, 1977:25). Although Evans-Pritchard, Callaway, Junod, and Roscoe, for example, all carried out their research in the midst of violent conflicts, this was barely mentioned in their monographs, though they certainly described the violent clashes in their personal letters and diaries (cf. Thornton, 1983:513ff.). One of the reasons for this may be that anthropologists conducted their field research in ‘pacified’ regions under the protection of colonial administrations, and implicitly accepted colonialism’s purported task of bringing peace and ending the ‘tribal wars’ (cf. Fukui and Turton, 1979:2). Since, on the one hand, the theories then current focused on the functions and structures of a supposedly static society which was more or less in equilibrium, violence and war had to appear as anomalies and to be excluded (ibid). The genre of scientific monographs also demanded the exclusion of violence and war, which were seen as a disturbance of the normal everyday life that was to be depicted (Thornton, 1983:513ff.). The constraints exercised by the genre did not allow the treatment or inclusion of the context in which the ethnographic field research took place (ibid:518).

In addition, the idea of the ethnic group as a totality, a closed unit, which was the object of most ethnographies, may have contributed to the exclusion of war, which, unlike feuds, took place between ethnic groups. Not until the concept of the ethnic group began to be criticized in the late 1960s was the ground cleared for studies on the genesis of ethnicity and on the relationships between ethnic groups, which were characterized not only by trade and marriage but also by war.

The beginning of an ethnology of war focusing on what was earlier excluded can be seen in the works of Bazin and Terray (1982), Ranger (1985), Geffray (1990), and especially David Lan (1987) on the war of liberation in Zimbabwe. From a historical perspective, Lan, for example, describes war against the background of a long-standing dialogue with the ancestors, mediated by spirit mediums. Western sociological categories like class affiliation and peasant consciousness (Ranger, 1985) no longer dominated the discourse; instead, the local perspective found expression – the view of the guerrilla fighters, spirit mediums, and peasants. Here the guerrillas’ ideology turned out to be expressed less in a political than in a religious discourse. The guerrillas, schooled in Marxism, legitimated their struggle and established a relationship with the populace with the aid of spirit mediums.

More recent investigations have meanwhile found that spirit mediums were used not only in Zimbabwe, but also by Renamo in Mozambique (Roesch, 1990). (In personal communication with the author, O. Roesch reported that Renamo leaders are supposed to have decided to employ spirit mediums for their goals after having read Ranger’s and Lan’s books). When, at the beginning of the 1990s, Renamo began gaining ground, a man named Manuel Antonio was possessed, like Alice, by various Christian spirits. On orders from these spirits, he built up the Naprama movement, which supported Frelimo and inflicted heavy losses on Renamo. The SPLA in southern Sudan also co-operates with prophets (Johnson, 1994; Hutchinson, 1996).

As will be shown in what follows, war and, with it, the use of modern technologies have led to astonishing autonomous inventions in Africa, which demonstrate the power of African cultures to resist as well as their enormous ability to change and to incorporate the new and the foreign. The examples discussed here are not the only ones to refute the idea that the introduction of modern technology to Africa would also be accompanied by a process of secularization and an end to magic, on the model of European development. In Africa, at the moment, there appears to be a tendency towards what could be called ‘depoliticization’. This does not mean that politics is disappearing, but that it is expressing itself less in a political than in a religious discourse. It tends to be prophets and spirit mediums, rather than politicians and party leaders, who lead new movements and cults and who ‘invent’ their discourse. This should not be understood as a backward step or a recourse to pre-modern or precolonial phenomena, but as an expression of, and response to, modern developments, for Africa continues to invent its own modernity in a dialogue with God, and gods or spirits (Bayart, 1993:12).

Before describing the Holy Spirit Movement’s organization and method of waging war, I want to digress briefly to attempt a reconstruction of war in Acholi in precolonial times. For certain patterns and modes of behaviour from this period were also taken up again in the HSM and its successors.

War in Precolonial Acholi

Since war, although a universal phenomenon, takes a variety of forms, it is questionable whether its appearance can be regarded as an analytical category in anthropology (Descola and Izard, 1991:313). Although it is defined, unlike the feud, as violent conflict between political units which are independent of each other (for example, Fukui and Turton, 1979:3f.; Bazin and Terray, 1982:14), it is precisely this criterion of war which is not always clearly identifiable in precolonial times in Acholi. Nevertheless I shall use the term war in a pragmatic way in the following argument since it comes closest to matching the Acholi term.

The Acholi distinguished two kinds of war: first, the ‘war of attack’, Iweny lapir, which took place when a group of warriors set out to take women, cattle, etc.; and second, Iweny kulo kwor, war as a retaliatory measure after an attack by an enemy. As with witchcraft, here too an initial act of aggression was distinguished from a later act of retaliation. But since every war was embedded in a history of attack and counterattack, a war could almost always be legitimated and turned into a ‘just war’ by declaring it a retaliatory measure. In Acholi, one spoke of lapi, i.e. of a ‘just cause’, in such a situation. If one had lapi on one’s side (as the Holy Spirit Movement claimed), then the war was justified.

It is difficult to define the role war had in the economy and social life of the Acholi in precolonial times. The loss of cattle and an increase in the death rate from various epidemics and wars make the second half of the nineteenth century appear to have been particularly catastrophic in northern Uganda; there is therefore the danger of unwarranted generalization from the conditions of this period. But the anomie in Acholi, as described by various Europeans (Baker, 1866; Emin Pasha, 1917–27), also served to legitimate the later colonialization, the description of which may have been somewhat distorted and exaggerated. Since the sources are in an unsatisfactory state, it is possible to sketch only a very fragmentary picture of individual aspects of war in Acholi.²

As Jacobs did for the Maasai (1979) and Almagor for the Dassanetch (1979:126), I too would like to distinguish two forms of warfare for the Acholi: first as raiding, a regular phenomenon of normal life; and secondly as an escalation of the raid and an activity which was probably only an exception. Like hunting, war as raiding took place more or less regularly at the beginning of the dry season. Groups of ambitious men usually went to war without the permission of the chief, seeking to avenge the murder of relatives, to earn an honorific title as killers, or to plunder cattle and women, with the cattle often used in turn to pay bride wealth. In contrast to many other East African societies, the Acholi do not seem to have had age sets functioning as regiments in battle. If war broke out, all able-bodied men were called to arms. As mentioned above, the killing of an enemy was considered proof of manliness, and brave warriors were celebrated as heroes. They usually chose dawn as the time to attack a village of another chiefdom or ethnic group. There were seldom a large number of wounded or killed. Although this form of warfare was endemic, it was subject to tight limits.

The only weapons the Acholi used were spears and shields. Each warrior carried about five spears and a ring knife around his wrist (Grove, 1919:164). Unlike the Madi, who also used bows and arrows in battle, the Acholi used the bow only to hunt (Israel Lubwa, personal communication).

Although the introduction of rifles brought a differentiation among warriors – only the richer ones could afford a rifle, while the poor continued to fight with spears – this did not lead to the formation of a warrior aristocracy. For rifles were not necessarily a guarantee of victory, as was demonstrated by the war between the Jie and the Acholi around 1900 (cf. Lamphear and Webster, 1971). In this war the Acholi, who had rifles, were defeated by the Jie, who were armed only with spears.

But if the war was a major undertaking, it was the responsibility of the rwot, the chief, to mobilize the men of his chiefdom and perhaps also to form alliances with other chiefdoms to wage war together. In the Acholi-Jie war at the turn of the century, the warriors of some nine chiefdoms united to fight the Jie. Each of the larger chiefdoms formed its own fighting group under its own leader. It has been estimated that the Acholi put about 2,050 warriors into the field (ibid: 34). Wars with large armies of several thousand were not rare. As late as 1910, the National Archives report a campaign of 6,000 warriors from Acholi and Madi who attacked the Didinga together.

Before each war, the ajwaka, priests of the chiefdom’s jok, were asked whether the war would run a favourable or unfavorable course. This enabled them to influence the decision for or against war. If war was decided on, the support of the chiefdom’s jok was requested. Although he was basically responsible for the welfare of people and nature in a chiefdom, now he was mobilized for killing. But since the war was directed outward, against strangers, and often brought riches, cattle, and women, the jok’s power to kill did not really contradict his power to guarantee the welfare of the chiefdom.

As before a hunt, the warriors also had to be ‘pure’ before a campaign, i.e. they were not allowed to sleep with their wives the night before. Before setting off, they brought their spears, and later their rifles, to the shrine of the chiefdom’s jok. Here weapons and warriors were blessed by the chief’s mother or another old woman from the chief’s clan, who sprinkled them with the branches of an olwedo tree (poncho carpus laxiflorus) that had been dipped in a mixture of water and millet flour (Israel Lubwa, personal communication).

I was unable to learn much about Acholi battle tactics. Lamphear and Webster (1971) described how, in the Jie-Acholi war, the Acholi formed three units, in the centre and on each flank, with the right flank consisting of two smaller groups. Unlike the Jie, who were armed only with spears, many Acholi warriors in this campaign carried simple breech-loading rifles. But few of these functioned during the attack as they had been drenched in a heavy rainstorm and, in fact, the outnumbered Jie wrested victory from the Acholi. The Acholi were led by Tongotut, a famous warrior who had earlier defeated the Labwor and captured a large number of goats and women (ibid:33). He was also an ajwaka and had advanced from spirit medium to successful war commander (ibid). Many cases of ritual experts in the widest sense becoming military leaders are known, for example from the history of the Maasai Jacobs, 1965:77) and the Nandi (Matson, 1972). Alice too, who initially worked as a spirit medium and healer, later had a career as a war commander.

After this defeat, the Acholi sued for peace, underscoring this with a ritual. They interpreted their failure in a number of ways. First, they attributed it to the strength of the foes’ jok (see Chapter 7) and the weakness of their own. Secondly, some elders admitted that they, the Acholi, had been unjust in attacking their allies, the Jie (i.e. they had no lapi), and they therefore took defeat as a more or less just punishment. Thirdly, there was also a suspicion that a spy could have betrayed the plan to the Jie (ibid:35).

Grove (1919) describes fighting tactics in Acholi as follows. While the older warriors formed a front line and sought to use their shields to protect the younger warriors standing behind them, the latter threw their spears at the foe. If the enemy weakened, the younger warriors broke through the line of shields to stage a frontal attack (ibid: 164).

The rwodi apparently never took an active part in the fighting before the introduction of rifles,³ but appointed a military leader instead, since the chiefdom’s welfare and fertility were associated with the rwot’s bodily intactness and strength and his injury or death would have meant catastrophe for the chiefdom (Lamphear and Webster 1971:34f.). On the other hand, it is reported that rwot Awich, for example, successfully led a number of military campaigns – but this was later, during the colonial period (Girling, 1960:102).

When the warriors returned home after killing their enemies, the women received them at the entrance to the village with songs of praise. The elders placed a forked branch with an egg in the fork on the path to the village.⁴ The returning warriors trampled on the egg on their way to the kac, the ancestral shrine of their own lineage, which they circled three times. On one of the next few days, the warriors, who were considered impure, sacrificed a black and white billy goat in the bush by running it through with a spear. The men present then collected firewood with their left hands, to make a fire on which they roasted the animal without adding salt.⁵ After the meal, they gathered up the bones, threw them in the fire, laid twigs over them, and stamped on the flames until they were extinguished. I was told that the sacrificial animal was killed to pacify the cen, the evil, vengeance-seeking spirits of the enemies, who had been killed.

But even after this sacrifice, the killer was still not pure. He had to sleep in the same room as a girl who had not yet menstruated, with the door open. Only after he had been led to a termite hill and termites placed on his right upper arm had bitten him was he granted the title of a killer, the moi name. The girl who slept beside him and was also bitten by termites also received an honorific moi name. Only now were both of them considered pure. They ran back to the ancestral shrine ‘as fast as if they wanted to go to war again’, and there the community ate and drank, and songs of praise were sung. A male ajwaka who had already received a moi name carried out the ritual activities (R.M. Nono and I. Lubwa, personal communication).

Girling also provided a supplementary description of the purification ritual. The head of the enemy who had been killed was blessed at the ancestral shrine by sprinkling it with olwedo branches dipped in a mixture of water and millet flour. A young girl was symbolically given to the warrior as a wife, and remained with him in his hut for three or four nights. Every morning and every evening they both followed the path the warrior had taken when he returned to the village. When they came to the village, the man blew a whistle, shouted the names of the dead person, and called on his spirit to come to the ancestral shrine. The warrior received three cuts on his right shoulder if he had killed a man and four if he had killed a woman. Then the men sacrificed a sheep in the bush and distributed the uncooked meat. Only then did the man and the girl receive moi names (Girling, 1960:103). This purification ritual was also carried out for hunters who had killed big game like elephants, buffalo, or antelope.

Wars in northern Uganda can be assumed to have increased with the coming of the slave traders and the introduction of rifles. Along with cattle theft and retaliation, the goal of these undertakings was now to capture women and children to be sold as slaves (cf. Lamphear and Webster, 1971:26, 32) in order to obtain rifles.⁶ And although the Acholi were initially victims of the slave hunts, some chiefs and their warriors managed to become slave hunters themselves (cf. Meillassoux, 1989). The theft of livestock and women recurred in postcolonial times: its practice was renewed by the soldiers of Joseph Kony’s Holy Spirit Movement, by the UPDA, and by some of the NRA (less by the soldiers of Alice Lakwena).

The ‘pacification’ and demilitarization of Acholi society that took place in the colonial period have already been noted (see p. 17ff). It should also be mentioned that, during the Second World War, many Acholi men joined the King’s African Rifles, in order to kill and thus receive a moi name. As soldiers, they were able to take up and continue the warlike ‘tradition’ in altered form in colonial and postcolonial times.

After the First and Second World Wars, these soldiers returned and were reintegrated in Acholi with relatively few problems (they received compensation and were ‘retrained’ in special programmes). But under Amin at the latest, a process began that Mazrui has termed the formation of a ‘lumpen militariat’ (1975). The increasing brutality, the lack of discipline, and the soldiers’ degeneration into robber bands have already been described (see pp. 25ff.). The Holy Spirit Movement was also an attempt to reverse this development, to discipline the soldiers, and to redefine their place in society.

Initiation in the Holy Spirit Movement

As I already explained above, the Holy Spirit Movement also served to reintegrate and rehabilitate a large number of Acholi soldiers who, as internal strangers, had become liminal and impure. In a ritual that the spirit invented while she was still in Kitgum, Alice purified the first 150 soldiers and made them holy.