In chiefs’ courts, cattle compensation became legally entrenched as the dominant means by which cases were settled between feuding parties. Government officials did argue over whether violent crimes should still be solved through compensation. Yet, officials quickly recognised the significance of cattle for settling grievances. Major Titherington described the Dinka judicial system as founded on ‘equality before the law, and the possession of cattle by all’.
1 Titherington, ‘The Riak Dinka’, page 167.Later, officials with anthropological training highlighted the need among the Nuer for cattle so that ‘the fundamental principle that a deceased person must be “married a wife” so that her children, begotten by some kinsman on his behalf, will bear his name, belong to his lineage, and may concern themselves with his interests in posterity’.
2 Howell, Manual of Nuer Law, page 41. The exchange of cattle embedded in the law recognition of the spiritual demand for a posthumous wife. Government officials in the 1950s were explicit about this reasoning and recognised that blood wealth needed to be equivalent to bride wealth.
3 Ibid., page 63. Therefore, the continuity of cattle compensation in the courts implicitly embedded recognition of the divine and divinely sanctioned norms into the chiefs’ courts. Court-enforced cattle compensation both explicitly gave cattle to the
kuar muon and the
baany e biith, recognising their authority over blood,
4 Letter from District Commissioner of Zeraf to Governor of Upper Nile Province, Zeraf District, 9 March 1940, SSNA 66.G.3. and also upheld the cosmological logics that cattle were needed to make peace by preventing death. This, in itself, allowed these priests to construct a continuity in their monopoly over blood.
‘The reason why the murder case is brought back to the
baany e biith is because of the need to swear that the feud will not be reopened. Blood is never managed by the government or chief; it is only the
bany e bith that manages’.
5 Interview with man in Gogrial, May 2018, in Dinka.At the same time, the role of the kuar muon and baany e biith in ending the feud increasingly became ceremonial and sacred, and not divine. When compensation was fully paid, these divine authority figures were not expected to question the chiefs’ courts’ expectation that full compensation would automatically end the feud. Although these figures threatened to curse those who fought and reopened a feud, the government would also use punitive force against anyone fighting. While the kuar muon and baany e biith continued to have a visible, ceremonial role, their political power to contest the judicially established outcome faded. They became sacred and confined by ceremony, more than being divine.
As Hutchinson has highlighted among the Nuer, another significant problem was that both the government-backed courts and customary law also fixed the number of cattle paid for specific offences, thus standardising the number of cattle paid over time. This prevented flexibility in blood wealth that was historically needed to ensure that blood wealth was adequate for bride wealth to allow the marriage of a posthumous wife. The government also often demanded cattle from among the blood wealth, reducing that available for bride wealth.
6 Pendle, ‘“The Dead are Just to Drink From”’.