People
Joseph Kony – biography, lesser known facts about him
If you have an interest in African history, you have probably heard of Joseph Kony and his Lords Resistance Army (LRA), a rebel group in Uganda. For those who don’t know, he is one of the most ruthless warlords ever, even for a continent that gave birth to some of the most notorious men like Charles Taylor, Jean-Bedel Bokassa and Idi Amin.
Kony and his LRA have been terrorizing this area of Africa for around two decades. Here’s a baker’s dozen surprising and different facts about this “speaker of God” and “spirit medium.”
Joseph Kony Biography
Although he would become popularly known, his full name is Joseph Rao Kony and he was born on July 24, 1961. Both parents, Luizi Obol and Nora Oting, were farmers. Aside from the fact that his parents were farmers, his extended family is known for farming in his village of Gulu in northern Uganda.
Although he was made to always go to church and Kony was even a Catholic altar boy. Even as a child he was vengeful and violent. He was one of the youngest in a family of six children.
For his education, the boy who would grow up began to be highly infamous, but he didn’t finish his elementary school, as he later dropped out of school at age 15. After graduating from school, the boy joined his brother, who was a witch doctor. He learned traditional healing from him and became a traditional doctor.
In the years to come, Kony would continue to destroy villages, torture and kill men, rape and maim women, and force children to join his army. According to him and the LRA, all they wanted was the overthrow of Museveni and the formation of a new government that would follow the Ten Commandments.
In an effort to catch him and curb his failed activities, Joseph Kony expanded his activities beyond Uganda to other countries including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan and Central African Republic (CAR), where he continues to target civilians.
Though he’s still wanted at the International Court for Crimes Against Humanity, where he and his LRA killed more than 10,000 people and forced more than 24,000 children to join the armed forces, he’s still running free and wild.
Here are 13 facts about Joseph Kony and Lords Resistance Army
1 – His father was a Catholic catechist and his mother was an Anglican member.
2- According to a former classmate of his, when he attended elementary school, Kony later became one of the most feared and hated rebel leaders in the world. He was a brilliant dancer who loved soccer.
3 – Joseph Kony apparently got the idea for his LRA from observing and participating in the activities of former prostitute Alice Lakwena and the Uganda People’s Defense Force of Yoweri Museveni, then known as the National Resistance Army,
4 – These activities included mass looting, burning houses, rape, genocide and murder, all of which seemed to fit Kony’s preferences well, as his own LRA later performed many of the same activities. During this period, more than two million people lived in concentration camps after the Museveni government’s helicopters burned down their homes (killing many of them in the process).
5 – After Museveni’s forces defeated Lakwena in 1988, Kony formed his LRA and first came to world prominence in the 1990s for kidnapping thousands of children to become either combatants or sex slaves. He and his older men made their choice of the captured girls, fueling speculation that he himself now has about 60 wives.
6 – He believes he is a “spiritual medium”. Claiming to have about 15 spirits, he knows what is about to happen and when “the enemy” is making plans to attack. He insists that his men strictly follow his rules and rituals, such as making the Sign of the Cross before going into battle lest they be killed, and drawing crosses in oil on their bodies and on their weapons. He tells them that the oil is the power of the Holy Spirit.
7 – Kony does not hesitate to kill his own AcholiPeople who seem to believe that “they purify” is the role God has assigned him and who use biblical quotations to explain the need – for him they have failed to do his thing support. He is quoted as saying that if they didn’t support him they would have to be “done”.
8 – Aside from kidnapping children for his army and Kony’s LRA has committed many malicious acts on those he conquered, killing anyone who does not support him. Lips, ears, noses and fingers are cut off, bodies are cut and mutilated, girls are raped and people are murdered without warning.
9 – When these atrocities are challenged in an interview he gave in 2008, he claimed that he is not the monster he made himself out to be and that it was in fact Museveni’s men who cut off the ears of the Acholi people and gouged out their eyes while claiming they were LRA fighters. He said that he couldn’t do that to “his brother” – although apparently it’s okay to kill that brother if he doesn’t join Kony’s LRA.
10 The interview came shortly after the start of some very sensitive peace negotiations brokered by the South Sudanese authorities, but the LRA were divided on whether to accept them. Then talks completely collapsed when Kony’s deputy Vincent Otti suddenly mysteriously died. Otti was very “pro” peaceful and pushed to get talks started and it is believed Kony decided not to sign and merely ordered him killed.
11 Almost in response, it seems, the LRA has gone back on the offensive. During the so-called Christmas Day 2008 massacre and the weeks that followed, they beat more than 800 people to death and kidnapped as many from the north-eastern areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic.
12 – Afterwards Museveni’s army with the help of the West intensified its campaign against the LRA, significantly reducing both size and operational capability in recent years. However, they didn’t completely destroy it or capture Kony, and it continues to rumble, killing and kidnapping as before, albeit on a much smaller scale.
13 – Because of his excessive violence and crimes against humanity, Joseph Kony now has an Interpol “Red Notice” on him – the closest thing to an international arrest warrant. The western world is desperate to stop it, as are the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Uganda and surrounding areas.
Let’s hope it doesn’t take too long for them to succeed.
