Person:

Kustenbauder, Matthew

This chapter identifies reasons for protracted, low-intensity civil war in Uganda during the last two decades. The first is located in Uganda’s history, in which social, political, and religious processes established the basic structures of violence that continue to operate in contemporary Uganda, reinforcing cleavages along regional, ethnic, and religious lines. The second is located in the complex balancing act involved in running a modern African state. After providing some historical background that frames the conflict, the chapter examines how both the NRM government of Yoweri Museveni and rebel insurgent movements have benefited from insecurity in the country. It argues that the government accrued political dividends while the Lord’s Resistance Army gained personal benefits so long as the conflict continued. A shift in the geopolitical landscape, coupled with the diminishing returns of a long-duration, low-level conflict, may explain why both sides recently renewed and intensified their efforts to negotiate a lasting peace. The chapter concludes by identifying two elements—personal security for the rebels, and northern development and integration—that will be critical in order for a negotiated peace to last.

This article examines the Legio Maria Church of western Kenya, a relatively rare example of schism from the Roman Catholic Church in Africa. One of more than seven thousand African Initiated Churches in existence today, it combines conservative Catholicism, traditional religion and charismatic manifestations of the Spirit. Yet this group is different in one important respect—it worships a black messiah, claiming that its founder, Simeo Ondeto, was Jesus Christ reincarnated in African skin. This article considers factors involved in the group's genesis as a distinct modern-day messianic movement, including: (1) the need to defend and define itself vis-à-vis Roman Catholicism; (2) the appropriation of apocalyptic ideas found in Christian scriptures and their synthesis with local religious traditions; and (3) the imitation of Jesus' example and teaching to confront political and religious persecution in a manner marked by openness, universalism and nonviolence. Eschewing Western theological categories for African ones, this article draws upon internal sources and explanations of Legio Maria's notion of messianism and Ondeto's role therein to illustrate that, far from being a heretical sect, Legio may well represent a more fully contextualized and authentically homegrown version of Catholicism among countless other African Christian realities.