A war of the hakuma

As elsewhere in Africa, the post-Second-World-War era brought a shift in the emphasis of the colonial metropole in favour of development in the colonies.2 This resonates with other colonial policies in the 1940s across Africa. Frederick Cooper, Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present (Cambridge University Press, 2002); H. A. Morrice, ‘The Development of Sudan Communications’, Sudan Notes and Records 30:1 (1949): 1–38. The new energy of the Sudan government for economic and political development was also driven by the shift in London’s policy to favour Sudan’s rapid independence from British and Egyptian rule.3 Douglas Johnson, The Root Causes of Sudan’s Civil Wars: Peace or Truce (James Currey, 2003), page 25. Yet, this development was not necessarily in support of the needs of most of the country. At independence in 1956, the new Sudan government was run by an elite empowered by previous decades of cotton production in the north, and without a need for populist support from the south or other peripheries.4 Edward Thomas, South Sudan: A Slow Liberation (Zed Books, 2015), page 170. The Sudan government did continue to pursue developmentalist projects, yet they continued a prime focus on development for the benefit of the riverine centre near the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. Government plans for construction of the Jonglei Canal are a clear example; through the canal’s construction, the government in Khartoum planned to increase the Nile flow in northern Sudan by draining the swamps upon which millions of Southern Sudanese depended.5 Ibid.

The railway into Southern Sudan was an example of development spending in the south which was seen as primarily for the benefits of urban areas in the north, both by supplying northern cities with food and by increasing national exports. The aim of the railway was to start moving millet, groundnuts, oilseed, rice, timber, livestock and ‘tropical produce’ from Bahr el Ghazal north by train.6 International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, Appraisal of the Development Program of the Sudan Railways, World Bank Documents, pages 6, 19. By 1958 the Khartoum government had secured foreign funding and started work to expand the railway system including the construction of a southern extension to Wau.7 Ibid., page 16. Railways, compared to roads and rivers, are a more centrally controlled transport infrastructure.8 Peter Woodward, ‘Review of City of Steel and Fire – A Social History of Atbara, Sudan’s Railway Town (1906–1984) by Ahmad Alawad Sikainga’, Annales d’Éthiopie 20 (2004): 281–283; Ahmad Alawad Sikainga, City of Steel and Fire – A Social History of Atbara, Sudan’s Railway Town (1906–1984) (James Currey, 2002).

The relevance for people in Gogrial of the railway to Wau was both their proximity to Wau and the question of whether the railway would run through Gogrial before reaching Wau. In the end, the railway to Wau was built through Aweil. Elders in Gogrial remember officials visiting in the 1950s to see if this was a preferable route for the railway.9 Interview with two elders in Gogrial, June 2018. They even remember them bringing sections of railway track to help their explorations. When discussing this with people in Gogrial in 2018 there were mixed feelings whether Gogrial would have benefited from the railway. Chiefs retold accounts of chiefs in Gogrial in the 1950s seeing the railway as a threat. They could have realised that the railways would facilitate a predatory exploitation of Southern resources for northern cities. Yet, specifically, the chiefs are remembered as fearing that the railways could bring social and moral rupture; they were unsure they wanted things of government so close to their homes.

Divine authority figures were part of the contestations against the northern government. To contest these plans, baany e biith were called to stop the railway construction. After the baany e biith made multiple sacrifices, the engineers moved the railway route away from Gogrial and to Aweil. The lack of railway in Gogrial cemented the chiefs’ and baany e biith’s authority both by an apparent display of the latter’s authority over government decisions, and by reducing the presence of government (through the lack of railway) in Gogrial.10 Interview with man in Gogrial, June 2018, in Dinka. The baany e biith’s protest against this government decision also demonstrated moral and spiritual backing for such resistance.

The push-back by South Sudanese against the Khartoum government did not only come from divine authority figures. Southern Sudanese who were part of the broad sphere of the hakuma itself in the end became the main opposition, and the hakuma itself divided. Southern complaints that were mounting against the Sudan government were often explicitly about a lack of representation and access to government power. Southern members of the hakuma protested against their own lack of representation and eventually violently rebelled. On the 18 August 1955, soldiers in the barracks in Torit (south Southern Sudan) had mutinied. Soldiers in other barracks across the south followed, and many hundreds of people were killed. The following eight years were a period of growing uncertainty and violence in Southern Sudan.11 Øystein Rolandsen, ‘A False Start: Between War and Peace in the Southern Sudan, 1956–62’, The Journal of African History 52:1 (2011): 105–123. The new Sudan government regime of General Ibrahim Abboud from 1958 brought increased tensions between Southern Sudan’s educated elite and the ruling powers in Khartoum.12 Øystein Rolandsen, ‘Civil War Society? Political Processes, Social Groups and Conflict Intensity in the Southern Sudan, 1955–2005’ (PhD diss., University of Oslo, 2010). In 1963, on the anniversary of the Torit Mutiny, an armed group formed, championing the liberation of Southern Sudan and called itself ‘Anya-Nya’.

The Anya-Nya rebels were spatially centred in the Equatoria region, and the Sudan government was reluctant to admit that the Anya-Nya war included significant support in areas around the Bilnyang. Anti-government activity was often played down. For example, in 1952, during national strikes, the crew of the S.R.S. Tamai (then on District Service near Bentiu) and the workers building the Bentiu School participated in strikes.13 Letter to Commissioner of Labour (Khartoum) from M.Z. Amara for District Commissioner, Western Nuer District, Bentiu, 20 March 1952, SSNA UNP 37.B.10, page 14. The District Commissioner described the effect as minimal and limited to the staff of central government departments working in the district. For the District Commissioner, the strikes at this stage were not a problem for remote areas such as Ler or Bentiu. At the same time, to the west, there was enough concern for government officials to close schools across Gogrial and Tonj during 1952–53.14 Interview with Chief Morris Ngor Ater, Mayen Rual (Gogrial State), 31 July 2017.

For people in Gogrial, the common route into the hakuma blurred the line between the powers of the hakuma and the powers of the baany e biith, raising new cosmological questions. In the mid-twentieth century in Gogrial, the main route into the social sphere of hakuma was through a school education. Initially church-run schools offered an education to a select few Southern Sudanese. Missionaries first accessed Southern Sudan in the mid-nineteenth century, making use of access routes opened by merchants, and even trading in ivory to fund their missionary work.15 Roland Werner, William Anderson and Andrew Wheeler, Day of Devastation, Day of Contentment: The History of the Sudanese Church across 2000 Years (Paulines Publications Africa, 2000), pages 139–141. The global Catholic Church leadership even became concerned about the entanglement of the missionaries and merchants.16 Ibid., page 139. Yet, this entanglement from the earliest days meant that many Southern Sudanese associated churches with the broad spheres of the hakuma. During the Condominium period, the churches were reliant on the Sudan government’s permission to operate17 Francis Mading Deng and M. W. Daly, Bonds of Silk: Human Factor in the British Administration of the Sudan (Michigan State University Press, 1990), page 174; William L. Cleveland and Martin Bunton, ‘A History of the Modern Middle East’, 4th edn (Westview Press, 2009), pages 105–106. and, in Gogrial in the 1920s, District Commissioner Major Titherington urged the Verona Fathers to open a mission in Kuajok to help pacify the area.18 Werner et al., Day of Devastation, page 224. Cormack highlights that the Fathers had already been making plans for this move and had recognised Kuajok’s significance as a meeting place of important clans.19 Zoe Cormack, ‘The Making and Remaking of Gogrial: Landscape, History and Memory in South Sudan’ (PhD diss., Durham University, 2014), page 81. At this time, churches became closely associated with education as the first schools in Southern Sudan were run by churches; from the mid-1920s, these were often funded by government. Only in the late 1940s did the government itself start to run schools in the south. Schools in Gogrial in the twenty-first century are still called ‘pan abun’ – ‘home of the priest’. This created an enduring association between the hakuma, the church and education.

The Verona Fathers in Kuajok started a school, but there was initially a lack of local popular demand and the children attending church schools were from further afield. They also gained some popularity with people and clans that lacked power: church and education offered an opportunity to challenge existing class structures in which they had been excluded. However, over time, District Commissioners put pressure on the chiefs to send children to school so that they could gain the education needed to be court clerks.20 Mark R. Nikkel, Dinka Christianity: The Origins and Development of Christianity among the Dinka of Sudan with Special Reference to the Songs of Dinka Christians (Paulines Publications Africa, 2001), pages 176, 225. The Fathers promoted their education by sending salt home with their pupils during the school holidays, salt being expensive and hard to obtain at the time.21 Ibid., page 176. Those who were educated gained access both to baptism and to government employment.

School blurred the line between the divine authority of the hakuma and of other divinities. By the 1940s, many of those who went to school were from families of chiefs. As the spiritually empowered families of baany e biith overlayed with the families of the chiefs, many of those who were educated and became part of the hakuma, especially in Gogrial, were also connected to the powers of the baany e biith. This gave rise to questions of whether these government figures from the families of the baany e biith ultimately gained power from, and were accountable to, the hakuma or Nhialic (creator God). In Kuajok, the place of the mission and the school also blurred the hakuma–divinity line as the place was associated with three ‘bitter’ bany e bith clans.22 Interview with man in Gogrial, July 2018, in Dinka. Furthermore, church historians highlight how the Catholic missionaries of the early 1900s saw the Dinka religion as compatible with Christian faith. For example, Father Nebel, equated GARANG and ABUK (Dinka figures from creation) to the biblical Adam and Eve, and he discussed the similarities between DENG (a divinity that seizes prophets) and Jesus.23 Werner et al., Day of Devastation, page 226. Yet, a significant theological shift was the promise of resurrection after death and immortality through that resurrection rather than through future generations.24 Ibid., page 227.

At the same time, there remained competition between the church and baany e biith. A Church historian, Nikkel, retells Father Nebel’s experience with a bany e bith (probably Giir Thiik – discussed in Chapter 2) when he crossed the River Jur. The chief bany e bith forbade Father Nebel from shooting, asserting his superior power over this area. In turn, Father Nebel asserted that he had ‘come to reveal the Word of God to everybody and to teach them to write’ and that he had authority to shoot animals for meat on this land. Two antelopes then appeared that he shot. The appearance of the antelope seemed to empirically demonstrate the Father’s superior power. Yet, in the story, Father Nebel goes on to give the bany e bith the liver, to make a peaceful relationship.25 Ibid., page 176. Alternatively, local histories focus on a different competitive moment. People recount how missionaries and government wanted to arrest Giir Thiik. The government officials put him in a car to take him to prison in Wau. When Giir Thiik entered the car, the car would not move. When he was taken out of the car, the car would move again. Eventually they were said to have accepted his powers.26 Interview with man from Gogrial, Juba, March 2020. This directly parallels the story of the arrest of Nuer prophet Kolang Ket by the Sudan government in the 1920s. Kolang had been arrested by a local government official and was being taken to prison in Malakal via a boat from Adok Port. When Kolang was in the boat, the boat would no longer move.27 Jedeit J. Riek and Naomi Pendle, Speaking Truth to Power in South Sudan: Oral Histories of the Nuer Prophets (Rift Valley Institute, 2018). At the same time, the government and church recognition of Giir Thiik’s authority and his ability to preserve locally his status allowed him to work increasingly with the hakuma of the church and government. Giir Thiik was one of the first chiefs to send his own son to school in Kuajok. Later he even accepted a small school teaching basic literacy being built in his home area, adjacent to his own luak (cattle byre with circular mudded walls and a tall, thatched roof) and court tree.28 Nikkel, Dinka Christianity, page 177. Over time, graduates of these missionary schools entered government and gained jobs such as court clerks and chiefs. As Southern positions in government became more senior, these school graduates went on to acquire leadership positions in the government.

In the 1960s, the Sudan government hoped that the Anya-Nya were absent from Bahr el Ghazal, including the regions around the Bilnyang. Yet, they were not. Central to the Anya-Nya forces in Gogrial were those who had gone through, or were still attending, these schools and had become associated with the church, as well as their own family ties. Bernadino Mou Mou, a nephew of Chief Giir Thiik and born in Greater Gogrial, had been educated and became a prison warden and corporal in the Sudan government. In 1961 he defected and travelled to Congo to join the Anya-Nya forces. He had served with the Anya-Nya in early offensives in the Equatorias. By 1962, he was training recruits in Congo in order to return to Bahr el Ghazal (the north-western third of South Sudan that includes the communities to the west of the Bilnyang).29 Ibid., pages 254–255. Training was carried out in secret using sticks as guns.30 Cormack, ‘The Making and Remaking of Gogrial’. By then, recruits to the Anya-Nya, including government officials and school students, were moving from Gogrial to Congo to receive weapons and training.31 Interview with Chief Morris, 31 July 2017, Mayen Rual, in Dinka. In late 1963, William Deng visited these recruits from Gogrial and the wider area of Bahr el Ghazal in camps in Congo.32 Øystein Rolandsen, ‘The Making of the Anya-Nya Insurgency in the Southern Sudan 1961–64’, Journal of Eastern African Studies 5:2 (2011), page 225. In August 1963, Deng appointed Bernadino Mou Mou as Anya-Nya overall commander for Bahr el Ghazal. They travelled back to Bahr el Ghazal and in 1964 Mou Mou and his forces attacked Wau. They may have had as few as a hundred men and one rifle. The ambitious attempt failed and Mou Mou was captured.33 Ibid., page 225.

Despite the attack on Wau, the government wanted to deny the existence of the Anya-Nya war in the region. Therefore, the response of the government to the attack on Wau was a response of judicial redress and the criminalisation of the rebels. Bernadino and two others were hanged, five imprisoned for life and fifteen given other prison terms.34 The Daily Telegraph, 22 February 1964, as cited in Storrs McCall, ‘Unpublished Manuscript on the History of the First Civil War in South Sudan (Anya-Nya)’ (Sudan Open Archive, 1972), page 83. The government refused to accept that they were prisoners of war, contesting the notion that the Anya-Nya war had now come to Bahr el Ghazal. Despite their defeat, the attack on Wau demonstrated that the Anya-Nya could now operate in Bahr el Ghazal.

The punishment of these Anya-Nya rebels becomes a clear example of the use of law to violently insist on peace. Whether or not there is peace or war is often a highly contested question with significant political implications. Recently scholars have narrated how the normalisation of emergencies prevents authorities facing scrutiny and control, as well as how the emergency reshapes the ‘normal’ itself.35 S. Dezalay, ‘Wars on Law, Wars through Law?’ Journal of Law and Society 47:S1 (2020). In these debates, the focus has been on the power to declare the exception; when the exception is declared governments justify acting without constraint. Instead, in these events in Wau, the government asserted its power by declaring and legally constructing a lack of exception. According to the government, this was not an exceptional time of war, but an ordinary time of peace. The violent imposition of criminal accountability asserted this. The classifying of the attack on Wau as a criminal act also justified the government being allowed to commit the violence of hanging and imprisonment with impunity.

The Anya-Nya resisted the government’s framing of criminality. After Bernadino’s arrest and execution, the Anya-Nya captain in Bahr el Ghazal formed a company called ‘Guor Mou’ (‘Avenge Mou’ in Dinka).36 Kuyok Abol Kuyok, South Sudan: The Notable Firsts (AuthorHouse UK, 2015), page 255. The Anya-Nya framed the violence of the government’s hanging of Mou as morally repugnant. Within a very different moral framing, this put the government in a feud with the Anya-Nya and demanded a response of revenge. In June 1964, there were further attacks in Tonj, and Arab traders and civilians were repeatedly targeted. Plus, ambushes started around Gogrial. Even in the 1960s, ideas of revenge and blood feud were being used to mobilise support for wars of the hakuma, and rebel narratives of revenge were contesting the hakuma’s ability to sit outside of moral norms. By declaring the war an act of revenge against the hakuma, the Anya-Nya was also challenging the government’s implicit claims of power to commit violence with impunity. If the war was a feud between the Anya-Nya and government, the government was not a party that stood outside of these normative regimes. Instead, the government was subject to consequences for their moral violations and these consequences would be violently enacted by the Anya-Nya.

Cormack has documented how, in this context of growing unrest in Bahr el Ghazal, a massacre occurred in October 1964 at Lol Nyiel near Gogrial.37 Cormack, ‘The Making and Remaking of Gogrial’. Two days before the massacre, an Anya-Nya soldier had captured and killed a northern Sudanese trader in Gogrial. Cormack describes how the Anya-Nya commander, Valentino Akol Wol, then pinned a note to the body of the deceased northern Sudanese with the written words: ‘Sentenced to death by Valentino Akol Wol, Anya-Nya Chief Justice’.38 Interview by Cormack with Bona Malwal: Cormack, ‘The Making and Remaking of Gogrial’, page 205. Pivoting the claims of the government in the hanging of Bernadino, these words asserted the claimed legal authority of the Anya-Nya and used this claim of legal legitimacy to justify arbitrary killing. In response, government police forces rounded up, tortured and burnt a hundred or more local people. This display of spectacular violence was an attempt to create a deterrent against support for the Anya-Nya.39 Ibid., page 202.

The west of the Bilnyang also experienced the Anya-Nya conflict. For example, in Ler, on 22 January 1965, an Anya-Nya force led by Paulino Arop (sent from Bahr el Ghazal) was sent to attack Ler. He worked with local residents around Ler, but they only had four guns between them. They did manage to overrun the government post, killing fifteen northern policemen and taking four Southern police into the Anya-Nya.40 Ibid., page 3. They also captured twenty rifles, one machine gun and 3,000 rounds of ammunition – one of the largest loots from Anya-Nya raids. When the government attempted to reopen a post the following year, local support for the Anya-Nya meant that the government was violently repelled by them.