An ex-rebel answers UPDF on recent claims of victory
By Richard M. Kavuma
Feb 24, 2004
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As the UPDF and government officials speak of victory in the 18-year war, an ex-rebel leader tells Richard M. Kavuma that �people should stop saying �we defeated this one or that one�. Kony Paco means �help the home� in Luo, the main language of the fighters in the 18-year long rebellion led by Joseph Kony.
Not long ago, Kony Paco was called Adoko-gwok; I have turned into a dog. Poorer people still come here to eat cheap food or, as they call it, dog-food. My guide and I are looking for a former commander of the rebellion in northern Uganda. Perhaps he can explain why the Kony war is not ending. We pass another bush and jump over another ditch filled with dirty black water. Finally we are at the New World Meltar Jerusalem Church. To enter the small, unpainted brick building, we are ordered by a youngish priest to remove our shoes � like Muslims entering a mosque. Above the tiny entrance stands a large cross, painted in green and white. A small bowl with the crescent symbol of Islam sits on the right arm of the cross, a sun is on its top and stars on its left. Inside the church is its leader, 75 year-old Severino Lukoya. Wearing a sharp blue kaunda suit, and a cream wig like a judge, Lukoya walks slowly from his bedroom � a dark, low room that opens into the church, near the altar. The altar area, the only cemented part of the church, has a small table in front of a small box hewed into the wall. Below the box is a tiny heap of stones. Items on the crowded desk include the Koran, a Bible and a Vanjiri, symbols of Islam and Christianity.
There is also a green bottle of what Lukoya calls �holy water� and a tin of mooya (sesame oil that some rebels fighters believe makes them bullet proof). The Kony rebellion is full of religious symbolism. Kony�s fighters call themselves the Lord�s Resistance Army. �God came for every body,� says Lukoya, lifting his wrinkled fingers from the yellowish-white tablecloth for emphasis. �If everybody followed his Bible, Koran or Vanjiri, people would stop fighting each other.� Lukoya is one of the former leaders of the armed rebellion in northern Uganda, who is listed as defeated by the Uganda People�s Defence Forces (UPDF). But Lukoya dismisses that as idle talk by the army and government officials. �People should stop saying �we defeated this one or that one,� he says through an interpreter. �This cannot help us�. Yet all accounts say that Lukoya took over command of the rebellion at the end of 1987 after the government army defeated the forces of his daughter, the famous woman rebel leader Alice Auma Lakwena who is in exile in Kenya. �I have never fired a gun in my life, I have never been a soldier,� Lukoya says firmly. �I even don�t know how to operate a gun. And even up to now I don�t know anything military.� �People are just saying anything. For me I was not fighting. That is why they released me when they took me to Luzira (prison).� �What I was doing in the late 1980�s was just moving around looking for people who could help in doing the work of God,� the old man insists, opening his shrunken eyes wide. Yet there were reasons to fight: �If I wanted war and if I were a fighter I would still be fighting because the government was doing bad things.� At this point I wonder if Mzee Lukoya is senile with age. Why else could he deny such well-established facts? May be am wrong. The previous evening the old man had not returned from work by 7 p.m. He has a reputation as a good mason. Lukoya claims that God spoke to him on August 12, 1948 as he was reading the battered Luo Bible that he proudly keeps on his table. Lukoya narrates: �I saw a light fall on [the bible]. It was like a star. Then I heard a booming voice say: �You Severino Lukoya I know you have no sister or somebody to help you. I will teach you how to build. You will use the money from building to marry a wife with whom you will have 15 children.�� Lukoya had 15 children. His daughter, Doreen, 28 looks after him. His wife, the mother of ex-rebel leader Lakwena, lives at Bungatira, to the north of Gulu. She keeps cattle reportedly given to Lukoya by President Yoweri Museveni. �I started my first church in Angole, where people would come to pray to God. From there I proceeded to Kalongo were I started another church. After that I started moving to many other places. When I reached Pandwong in Kitgum I got messages that Government soldiers were killing and beating my people in places where I had been. These are bad things.� He says his church has many followers, especially the sick. �I pray for them according to Mark 6:16-18 and they get cured,� he says. In the end Severino Lukoya appeals to the �strong men of the world to stop making weapons of death� and teaching people how to make the weapons because God is not happy about it. �I am God�s voice,� he says. �That is why I speak with confidence.� We must have been the smallest congregation Severino has ever preached to. When I ask to take a few pictures, Severino readily accepts but he must first put on a Kanzu (tunic). Perhaps this concern for image explains why he, and others like him, refuse to be portrayed as a defeated force. Lukoya says the government should allow his daughter, Lakwena whom he last saw in 1986, to return from exile as a way to bring peace. �This thing of saying �we defeated Alice Lakwena� is not the way to build relationships,� he says, his voice rising a little for the first time. �Alice is there and she wants to come back home,� he says. �If the government cannot bring her back yet she is not doing anything against the government, what about somebody who is fighting the government? How can they be able to bring that one back?� He says that he met [former Presidential advisor] Kakooza Mutale and [former state minister for security] Muruli Mukasa and they promised to return his daughter. �When you quarrel with your brother, are you going to make peace when you keep saying that I defeated you, I defeated you? He coughs wearily, repeatedly. �We need to forgive and reconcile and stay together as brothers. Sitting down in peace talks is the way to bring peace.� Asked why the war in northern Uganda does not end, his answer is quick: �The war started in Kampala in 1986 and it continued. Ask them why they are fighting. I don�t know.� �For me I want peace. I am not happy when people die. I don�t want bloodshed. I don�t want children to be abducted. Both government and the rebels should sit and find a solution to end this war.�
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