Alice Lakwena, a Ugandan warrior priestess who led an ill-fated insurgency to topple President Yoweri Museveni in the 1980s, was laid to rest on Saturday at a funeral attended by several hundred followers.
An enigmatic leader, Lakwena inspired her poorly equipped troops with claims that spirits spoke through her. She led them into battle singing Christian hymns and convincing them that smearing themselves in shea-nut oil would repel bullets.
Her Holy Spirit Movement — one of some half-dozen rebellions that began after Museveni seized power in 1986 — is widely believed to be the forerunner of today’s Lord’s Resistance Army, a brutal rebel group led by her cousin, Joseph Kony.
Lakwena was 50 when she died from unknown causes on January 17 in neighbouring Kenya, where she had lived in a refugee camp for 20 years.
Her casket was flown on Friday to Uganda, and on Saturday was buried in her mother’s home village of Bungatira, in the Gulu district of the country’s troubled north. No senior Ugandan officials attended the funeral.
”She was a very strong, very committed woman,” her brother, Kaunda Robinson, told the Associated Press by telephone from Bungatira. ”She was considered like a man in our family, we all depended on her and she provided for us.”
Lakwena’s rebellion, which drew up to 15 000 followers, was one of the most unusual and successful insurgent groups that began in northern Uganda after Museveni, a southerner, and his troops swept the country.
Combining Christianity with the traditional beliefs of her Acholi tribe, she acted as a spiritual leader for her followers, who called her ”Mama Alice”.
In 1987, Lakwena’s ragtag army marched through Uganda and came to within 80km of the capital, Kampala, before Museveni crushed it in a bloody battle. Thousands of her followers, armed mainly with sticks and stones, died, and she fled to Kenya.
The Lord’s Resistance Army, accused of abducting up to 20 000 children to swell its ranks, is believed to have its origins in Lakwena’s rebellion. – Sapa-AP