Understanding Alice: Uganda's Holy Spirit Movement in context

Abstract

This article examines the Holy Spirit movement of Alice Lakwena, which emerged i n Uganda between 1987 and 1989. The popular account of Alice, as told in the Western media especially, ignored die social and historical contexts which are essential to understanding die forces which gave rise to her and her following. The spirit possession revealed by Alice Lakwena took forms which were familiar t o the people of this part of Uganda, aldiough die political and social dislocations of the late 1980s were significant in shaping her actions and in determining the full range of issues with which her spiritualism came to be associated. This can be seen by examining die actions of Alice herself, but also by recognising diat odier spirit mediums were active in the region at die same time. Spirit mediums helped to establish a degree of social accountability in a world where die state had largely lost its credibility and collapsed and where witchcraft and sorcery were widely believed to be die most common causes of mortality. These spirit mediums were influenced by Christian conceptions of morality: it was partly because spirit divination had become closely associated widi die Catholic Church diat Alice and odier mediums were able to marshal such large followings and to appeal to such a broad spectrum of society. The case of Alice Lakwena is fascinating and informative not because of its novelty but because of its mixture of old and new forms, its continuities with die past and widi wider social processes, and its responses to new social traumas.