Uganda: LRA leader’s wife reveals life with him

By SAMUEL RICHARD EGADU

At the age of 27, Lily Atong has lived most of her life as a captive and wife of Joseph Kony, the enigmatic and rarely seen leader of the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army, LRA.

She has three children by Kony - one named George Bush, after the former US president though it is unclear which - and has survived despite being held by the Ugandan rebel group for two extended periods.

Her second and most recent escape from the rebel army, currently holed up in the remote northeastern corner of the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, came last December when the rebels were attacked by the Uganda army.

The attacks came after Kony failed to appear on November 30 to sign a peace agreement with Uganda that had been two years in negotiations.

"Kony told us he refused to turn up at the signing venue (Ri-Kwangba) because there were plans to arrest him," Atong told IWPR in an interview at the Gulu Support the Children Organisation (GUSCO) in northern Uganda where she is receiving psychological treatment and rehabilitation.

"He said he had information on plans to arrest him if he had risked appearing to sign the agreement," she said.

"It’s hard to determine what Kony really needs. He talks of peace and fighting. He told us he will do anything as [long as] he still holds the power. He said will continue fighting rather than being taken to the [International Criminal Court, ICC] to be hanged."

Kony and his top commanders are wanted by the ICC in The Hague, which does not have the death penalty, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Additionally, Kampala has indicated it could put Kony on trial in Uganda should he turn himself over to authorities.

Atong was first abducted by LRA rebels in the Amuru district in northern Uganda in 1991, when she was just ten years old. "We were eight going to school. We met the rebels who abducted all of us," Atong told IWPR [Institute for War & Peace reporting].

She and the others were taken to one of the LRA camps in Nisutu in Eastern Equatoria state of southern Sudan where Kony was based. Kony selected her and two other abductees to help his wives.

"After five years, Kony told me I was his wife. I feared he would kill me if I refused. I cried, but I had no option but to yield. So I became his wife," Atong said.

She gave birth to a baby boy in January 1997 whom Kony named George Bush, and in 1999 had another baby also by Kony.

In 2005, when Ugandan troops attacked an LRA camp in South Sudan, she managed to escape and returned to Gulu hoping to start a new life.

During the Juba peace negotiations in 2006, however, she accompanied a 22-member peace team from northern Uganda to meet Kony in August that year to try to persuade him to release the hundreds of other women and children held captive by the LRA.

"At first, I didn’t want to go," Atong said. "However, I changed my mind after several people persuaded me. I also accepted to go with the selected leaders because I wanted to go and [collect] my son, George Bush, who remained in the bush.

"I knew I was going to come back with the leaders. However, on the day we were supposed to come back to Uganda, Kony told me I was going to remain with him. He said if I risked moving, I would be shot.

"I pleaded with him. He became so furious and threatened to kill me. As I feared to be killed, I decided to remain with him."

She was forced to stay two more years with Kony and again gave birth to another child by him, she said.

Atong was among ten of Kony’s wives who he kept at the LRA’s Nigeria Camp. They were part of an estimated total of 30 wives that Kony keeps scattered in various other camps, most of them abducted girls, Atong said, along with his estimated 100 children.

Shortly before the December 14 attack, however, Kony distributed his wives to different field commanders then left with his private guards.

"Kony abandoned us [women]. He went with a few of his heavily armed escorts," Atong told IWPR. "He is ever changing his location. None of us [women] knows where he is stationed."

The December attack deeply affected Kony, "Kony was OK before the attack but after the attack, he became so wild, crazy and rowdy. He started issuing orders and shouting at his troops.

"Life in the LRA camp was not bad before the attack. We had lots of food from CARITAS. We planted beans, groundnuts, sweet potatoes, peas and other crops for food. Everything was peaceful."

The Catholic Church aid agency CARITAS was contracted by international sponsors to supply food, water and materials to the rebels as an incentive for them to continue negotiating and stop raiding villagers.

But, Atong said, "During the talks, the rebels kept on abducting people from DRC and southern Sudan and train them [to fill the army’s ranks].

"The LRA rebels are [very] many. Some are in Central African Republic while others have moved near Kisangani in DRC."

She feels lucky to have again escaped the LRA.

"We [women] and the rebels walked for several [kilometers]. One day, we were ambushed by the Ugandan soldiers. They fired at us and we took off in different directions," she said.

"Five of us [women] took off in one direction. I knew it was soldiers who had attacked us. I decided to move back [toward] the soldiers while raising my hands and pleading with them not to kill me. One of the women also decided to follow me. The soldiers spared our lives as they didn’t shoot us.

She said she was finally taken to the Ugandan army camp before being airlifted to Uganda.

The Ugandan military spokesman, Major Felix Kulayigye, said Uganda will pursue the LRA until Kony is killed or signs a peace agreement.

"Our intelligence forces are in DRC to support the Congolese forces in hunting the LRA," he said. "We shall continue to pursue the military option until Kony is killed, captured or signs the peace agreement."

By LESLIE GOFFE

First it was Oprah Winfrey’s wistful reach for the continent, now other prominent African Americans are finding their roots.

In 2005 Oprah Winfrey underwent DNA testing in an effort to determine the genetic make-up of her body’s cells.

The popular American talk show host wanted to know where her ancestors, taken as slaves to the United States, had come from.

Famous genes

Since then thousands of other African Americans have followed suit, many of them household names in the US.

Comedian Chris Rock discovered that he was descended from the Udeme people of northern Cameroon.

LeVar Burton, an actor who played the slave Kunta Kinte in the TV drama Roots, linked himself up genetically with the Hausa in Nigeria.

Civil rights leader Andrew Young traced his lineage to the Mende people of Sierra Leone and is also believed to be a distant relative of one of the leaders of the 1839 Amistad slave ship mutiny.

DNA testing has also resulted in some African Americans being bestowed with honorary African titles.

The Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker, who portrayed the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, was made an honorary chief of Igboland in south-eastern Nigeria.

He was given the title of Nwannedinamba of Nkwerre which means "brother in a foreign land", during a visit to Nigeria in April.

Getting results

There are more than two dozen genealogy organisations in the US selling genetic ancestry tests but African Ancestry is the only black-owned firm.

It is also the first to cater specifically to African Americans. Of the half a million Americans who have purchased DNA tests, around 35,000 of them are African American.

African Ancestry charges $349 to test either a person’s maternal or paternal lineage.

Once the fee is paid, swabs used to collect a DNA sample from the inside of the cheek are sent to the customer and then back to African Ancestry’s laboratory.

"We did not talk about where we came from when I was growing up"

Lyndra Marshall

The DNA’s genetic sequence is extracted and compared to others in the firm’s database.

The company claims this contains 25,000 samples from 30 countries and 200 ethnic groups, and is the largest collection of African lineages in the world.

African Ancestry says that they are very precise in tracing where a person’s ancestors originate from.

Once this is known, a "results package" is sent out, including a print-out of a person’s DNA sequence, a certificate of ancestry and a map of Africa.

"It’s a kind of welcome to Africa package," said Ghanaian-born Ofori Anor, editor of the African expatriate magazine, Asante.

Transformation

Gina Paige, a founder of African Ancestry, wants to transform the way people view themselves and the way they view Africa.

When many African Americans visited Africa in the past, they were interested mostly in kente cloths and masks; nowadays they want to know more about the country they are visiting.

Although they still visit the slave castles, they are now also interested in the price of property.

Purchasing a townhouse in the Ghanaian capital Accra or a commercial property in Sierra Leone’s Freetown feels less implausible.

"What we need now is for people to get deeply involved in one particular country or region or culture," said Andrew Young, the civil rights leader whose consulting firm acts as a liaison for American companies wanting to do business in Africa.

There has been a change too in the way Africans see African Americans and claims of kinship that were once viewed with amusement are now embraced.

This is partly due to the emergence of President Barack Obama and because of the role played by African Americans in his historic election.

As a result, African politicians and businessmen want African Americans to lobby in the US on the continent’s behalf.

Traditional African rulers have also been busy handing out honorary chieftaincies to African Americans in the hope it will lead to an increase in investment and a boost in tourism.

Guinea-Bissau’s Tourism Ministry encouraged comedian Whoopi Goldberg to visit when in 2007, DNA tests showed she was descended from the Papel and Bayote people of the country.

Unfortunately, Goldberg has not taken up the offer as she has a fear of flying and has not been in an aeroplane for 20 years.

Unlike the Hollywood actress, as soon as Lyndra Marshall, a 56-year-old retiree from Maryland near Washington DC discovered her African heritage, she immediately boarded a plane for Ghana’s Ashanti region.

"We did not talk about where we came from when I was growing up," said Ms Marshall.

Since she found out she was of Ashanti descent, she has been trying to get other people to visit and invest in the country.

Along with DNA technology, Ms Marshall credits President Obama with kindling an interest in Africa.

"With Obama being both African and American, and our president, this has made many of us interested in where we came from, too."

Getting it right

Although many people are excited about the prospect of tracing their ancestry, critics say the work of America’s genealogy companies is far from accurate.

On a visit to South Africa in 2005, Oprah Winfrey said that DNA testing had conclusively revealed where she is from. She thought she was Zulu but subsequent DNA testing showed she was a descendent of the Kpelle people of Liberia.

Professor Deborah Bolnick of the University of Texas is particularly critical of African Ancestry. She says its database is too small to fulfil its marketing promise that it is "the only company whose tests will place your African ancestry in a present day country or region in Africa".

"Consumers should know the limitations and complexities before they spend hundreds of dollars thinking they’re going to find an answer to who they really are," said Professor Bolnick.

"It’s really much more uncertain than the testing companies make out."

Despite these limitations, African Ancestry customers like Ms Marshall are convinced her results are correct.

"I have lots of family that look very Ghanaian, they are short like them, dark like them and I have a cousin that looks just like the Ashanti king."

However, comments like this offend the Editor of Asante magazine.

"African Americans just want to be able to say they were once kings and once ruled the world," said Mr. Anor.

He feels that African governments and traditional rulers should stop the practice of granting citizenship and chieftaincies to African Americans.

"Just because your genetics show you came from a place, should that mean you can lay claim to that group of people or place now?"