Kolang Ket’s main challenge to the impunity of the
hakuma came through his death. The example of revenge for the death of Nuer prophet Kolang Ket
provides an early example of the contestation between a prophet and a government official over the government’s ability to claim that they could kill with impunity. When the Anglo-Egyptian government first approached Kolang Ket in July 1923, relations were reported by the government as cordial.
1 Johnson, Nuer Prophets, page 261. However, in the 1920s, Dinka-Nuer raids and retaliations resulted in the death of Kolang Ket’s son.
2 Ibid., pages 259–61. In obedience to government, Kolang had initially not retaliated – despite the local unpopularity of this stance.
3 Ibid., page 261. Yet, after his son’s death, he sought violent revenge. The government interpreted his retaliation as an act of defiance against the government itself and not just the Dinka. By using force without the government’s permission, Kolang Ket had effectively challenged the government’s claim to a monopoly on violence. For the government, this justified violent, punitive patrols against Nuer communities and the government arrest of Kolang Ket and his imprisonment in Malakal.
Kolang Ket was already an old man and local memory recounts that he fell gravely ill during this imprisonment. British officials in the Sudan government were said to have made the decision to send him home to die. The Nuer government official Caath Obang was given the task of escorting him home from the Nile port of Adok.
4 Ibid., page 265. Caath was part of a vanguard of Nuer who were promoted into government leadership based on displays of government support. Johnson described how Caath had been subordinate to Chief Wuon Kuoth but was ambitious and gravitated to government.
5 Ibid., page 265. In 1924 he was eventually deported from the Nuerlands for oppressive acts against his fellow Nuer.
6 Percy Coriart, Western Nuer District Report, 1 February 1931, page 303. Later, in 1929, he would briefly be appointed to the Dok chieftaincy further south. Yet, his lack of local support would quickly see his downfall. Caath Bang represented to the Nuer the imposition of the government.
7 Interview with youth, Adok (Ler County), 30 April 2013 (in Nuer).On reaching the western Nuer with Kolang Ket in June 1925, Caath killed Kolang Ket by burying him alive.
8 Johnson, Nuer Prophets, page 265. Some accounts instead claim that Kolang Ket died from age or illness and that he was not buried alive but buried after this death in Adok. Popular memory upheld this account of Kolang Ket’s death and was still widely told when I was interviewing in 2013:
When Kolang Ket got sick, they brought him back from Malakal. When he reached Thoar [just inland from the Nile port of Adok], the soldier Caath Bang caught Kolang again. He caught him and killed him. He dug a grave while the man had not yet died and put him in alive. He ordered the people to put much soil on it.
9 Interview with youth, Adok (Ler County), 30 April 2013 (in Nuer).The burial of Kolang while still alive is common to most accounts of his death. Yet some accounts suggest that Caath’s stance against Kolang was only to refuse to let him go home to die. Caath then buried him away from his home.
10 Interview with son of Nyaruac Kolong, Koch, 3 May 2013 (in Nuer). Either way, Caath was using his government authority to confront and subvert MAANI’s power over life, death and burial. Caath directly challenged MAANI’s power over death and claimed his power as a government official to kill with impunity and to have authority to decide burial. Still today, Kolang Ket’s grave is a sizeable mound on the main road to Adok. Local residents say that they have not marked or tended the grave to show disapproval at the way Kolang died.
Soon after Kolang’s death, MAANI directly challenged Caath’s, and therefore the
hakuma’s, ability to kill with impunity. In the 1990s, Johnson records that Caath’s death in 1930 was attributed to MAANI.
11 Johnson, Nuer Prophets, page 272. The following is an account given to me in 2013 of MAANI’s revenge:
As he was buried, Kolang said to Caath, one day I will come back as an elephant. When the time came, in the morning there were clouds in the east that looked like a lone elephant coming. There was an elephant on the ground and a black cloud above. When the soldier saw, he told them not to go to it but that he himself would kill it. He went out shooting but no bullets came out. So, the elephant captured him and killed him.
12 Interview with youth, Adok, Ler County, 30 April 2013 (in Nuer).Others provide similar accounts.
13 Interview with son of Nyaruac Kolong, Koch, 3 May 2013 (in Nuer); Johnson, Nuer Prophets, page 272. Through the elephant’s act of revenge, MAANI displayed his superior power over the government and the gun, and showed that the government too would be held accountable for its lethal killings. The government was not beyond spiritual consequences nor could it successfully claim impunity. The story continued to remind people that the power has limits, despite its brutal and lethal nature. The story tells us that, despite Kolang Ket’s death at the hands of government, MAANI still retains the power to sanction those who kill, including government. Government reports record Caath Obang briefly becoming a chief of the northern Nyuong after Kolang Ket’s death, suggesting that the killing was not immediate. Yet even the government records did recount an elephant killing Caath while out hunting.
14 See Johnson, Nuer Prophets, page 272.