The 1970s brought peace between the Sudan government and the Anya-Nya rebels. A series of secret talks by the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the All-Africa Conference of Churches (AACC) with the Sudan government and Anya-Nya rebels made the possibility of talks tangible.
1 John Ashworth, ‘Wunlit Peace Conference (1999)’, in John Akec et al. (eds), We Have Lived Too Long to Be Deceived: South Sudanese Discuss the Lessons of Historic Peace Agreements (Rift Valley Institute, 2014): 33–36, page 34. During the negotiations, church negotiators used breaks for prayer at strategic moments to calm tensions between parties.
2 Douglas Johnson, ‘Addis Ababa Agreement (1972)’, in John Akec et al. (eds), We Have Lived Too Long to Be Deceived: South Sudanese Discuss the Lessons of Historic Peace Agreements (Rift Valley Institute, 2014): 8–10, page 9. Canon Burgess Carr (AACC) explicitly drew on Old Testament texts, common to Muslim and Christian faiths, to try to unite the parties.
3 Cormack, ‘The Making and Remaking of Gogrial’, page 333. In February 1972, the Addis Ababa Peace Agreement was signed. The peace agreement also committed to incorporating the Anya-Nya into the national army and government, and into its payroll. It provided a reward through future salaries for the service of these forces.
The incorporation of the Anya-Nya forces into the Government of Sudan also brought new cosmological questions. In response, divinely seized figures remade rituals to ‘creatively refuse’
4 This references Graeber’s discussions: David Graeber, ‘Culture as Creative Refusal’, Cambridge Anthropology 31:2 (2013): 1–19. government claims to be the ultimate authority even in the towns. Anya-Nya forces in the region, many of whom had familial connections to
baany e biith, now found themselves in government jobs in Wau as a result of the 1972 peace agreement. This brought ambiguity and contestation over whether these government officials from local
home communities, and even in the
hakuma space of the towns, were ultimately responsible to the Sudan government or still subject to the moral and cosmological hierarchies of home. In this context, various divine authorities asserted their power over these government officials. For example, in the mid-1970s, a divinely seized song composer came from rural Gogrial to Wau. He would often socially gather with the former Anya-Nya government officials from Gogrial. One night he dreamt of someone coming from the eastern part of Gogrial to Wau.
5 Interview with man who had this song written, May 2022, Luonyaker (South Sudan). He described the man and the next day the man arrived. The composer called the government officials from the man’s home area to come to him and sacrifice a goat. This ritual sacrifice by leaders or observers was not a normal part of the routine of song composition, but was a creative way for the composer to both demand compliance by government officials and the performance of a ritual associated with ritual practices of the villages, even though they were in the town. He remade culture to creatively refuse the exclusion of the cosmological order of the
home in the town. Even though they were government officials, they came and complied with this divine instruction. In the cosmic politics, the government officials did not trump more ‘bitter’ divine authorities.