Recently a new video has swept across the web and gained immediate worldwide attention. Invisible Children’s KONY 2012 video and movement has fevered many hearts, gaining its highest popularity in American youth and college campuses. Celebrities including Rihanna and Oprah have tweeted and shared the video, news and radio stations have praised and scolded the video, and Invisible Children has raked in millions thanks to the video. What is the aim of KONY 2012 and what will it ultimately accomplish for Uganda? It will be proven that this video is wholly incapable of capturing Joseph Kony and any recent advances in doing so are not credible to Invisible Children.
In order to best understand KONY 2012, one must first recognize the gravity of Joseph Kony’s actions and the complexity of his capture. Tension in Uganda first began to stir long before Kony came to power. Problems began as various Acholi prophets, known to be possessed by spirits, began to challenge Museveni’s National Resistance Army, also known as the NRA (Behrand, 21). It was a young woman named Alice Auma, later to be known as Alice Lakwena (the name of the spirit which guided her calling) who transformed these feeble uprisings into organized war against the government beginning in 1985 (Behrand, 21). Lakwena recruited former rebel soldiers to her movement, coupling brilliant war tactics with magical practice (Behrand, 21). While attempting to march with 10,000 to the capital of Uganda, Lawkena and her soldiers were stopped and defeated by government troops (Behrand, 21). Lakwena vanished to Kenya where she still lives today, leaving behind a legacy which her father and young cousin, Joseph Kony, would soon assume (Behrand, 21).
Joseph Kony revamped Lakwena’s Holy Movement to an atrocious new level. What first started as a holy movement that would save the Acholi people from evil spirits and repression from the Ugandan government, became a fight only for power, with no clear motives, and...