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FACTBOX-Five facts on Ugandan rebel prophetess
03 Feb 2007 16:04:27 GMT
Source: Reuters

BUNGATIRA, Uganda, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Ugandan prophetess Alice Lakwena, who led a revolt that foreshadowed a 20-year rebellion by Lord's Resistance Army leader Joseph Kony, was buried in her home village in northern Uganda on Saturday.

Following are five facts about Lakwena:

* Born Alice Auma in northern Uganda in 1956, she abandoned her work as a fishmonger to become a healer after claiming to be possessed by a spirit called "Lakwena" while in her late 20s. She won a reputation by curing mental illness and impotency at a temple she set up in a village called Opit.

* When President Yoweri Museveni seized power in 1986 by overthrowing a junta of generals from her Acholi tribe, she used her reputation for perfoming miracles to muster up to 10,000 followers to try to take power. They included Acholi soldiers from the army Museveni defeated, peasants and school children.

* Smearing her troops with crosses of shea-butter oil, she mixed Christian symbolism with Acholi beliefs to persuade her forces they would be immune from bullets provided they followed her 20 Holy Spirit Safety Precautions, which included not taking cover behind anthills and having a regulation two testicles for men. Many walked into battle armed only with stones, which she said would explode like grenades.

* Lakwena appointed a "secretary" to write down the commands of the various spirits that possessed her, including "Invisible Chairman" and "Wrong Element," who gave the orders for her army -- called the Holy Spirit Mobile Forces. Her followers, who included a former education minister named Isaac Newton Ojok, were encouraged to keep diaries of her campaign in school exercise books.

* Promising to part the White Nile and instal a new era of harmony in Uganda, Lakwena advanced for months before her forces were routed on October, 30, 1987, several dozen km (miles) from Kampala. She was forced to flee into exile in Kenya on a bicycle where she lived until her death in January.
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