The brutal power of the gun and government offensives meant that people not only sought protection and power from the gun, but also other divine authorities. The wars of the 1980s–2000s gave people new experiences of invisible powers that baany e biith either had to compete with or include within their own cosmic orders. For example, those in Gogrial saw soldiers in the Sudan Armed Forces using ran wal (purchased medicine or magic) that they wore on their arms and that could stop bullets penetrating them. Specifically, the 1980s–2000s also saw the emergence of new free divinities in Gogrial.
In the 1990s came the emergence of new free divinities in Gogrial that were specifically associated with war and spatially associated with the cattle camps. This reflected the growing dangers and politics of the cattle camp, especially with the emergence of the SPLA-backed
titweng (cattle guards) and the proliferation of guns. The divinities that came were specifically
jok tong (divinities of war). This included MABIORDIT and MAGOTDIT.
1 Interview with man in Gogrial, May 2018. Cormack traces the emergence of MABIORDIT to Tonj in the late 1980s. Cormack notices that he came to the attention of the authorities when MABIORDIT requested the man it had possessed kill his eight-year-old son.
2 Cormack, ‘The Making and Remaking of Gogrial’, pages 247–249. However, in Gogrial, MABIORDIT did not emerge until the late 2000s, after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA).
MABIORDIT and MAGOTDIT were renowned for making people immune to bullets. Powers that make bullets unable to harm are far from unique to MABIORDIT and MAGOTDIT, or even to South Sudan. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the famous Mai Mai rebel group won support from the population by demonstrating their legendary invulnerability to bullets. They would sprinkle a domestic animal or garment with blessed water –
maï – before shooting it. When the object or animal was unharmed, their power was proved.
3 Kasper Hoffmann, ‘Myths Set in Motion: The Moral Economy of Mai Mai Governance’, in Ana Arjona, Nelson Kasfir and Zachariah Mampilly (eds), Rebel Governance in Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2015): 158–179, page 159. Immunity to bullets made their possessors notorious fighters as they were often fearless and lethal in battle. These free divinities appealed to young men as they offered protection in this context of armed conflicts,
4 Ibid. and gave them power to confront the guns of governments, including the Sudan government.
Whether these
jok tong were a continuation of cosmic systems, or a creative remaking of culture, was debated. In the late 1940s, British anthropologist Godfrey Lienhardt had recorded that there were a number of active, free divinities including DENG, GARANG and MACARDIT.
5 Godfrey Lienhardt, Divinity and Experience: The Religion of the Dinka (Clarendon Press, 1961), page 56. These free divinities made their presence known through illness and then through declaring their name and instructions through the words of this seized person.
6 Ibid., page 57. Each of these free divinities had their own personalities and ‘biographies’.
7 Ibid., 81–95; Cormack, ‘The Making and Remaking of Gogrial’, page 246. These free divinities were not exclusive for the
baany e biith and Lienhardt sees their proliferation as undermining
beny e bith authority.
8 Lienhardt, Divinity and Experience, page 169.At the same time, MAGOTDIT and MABIORDIT did represent a creative remaking of warriors’ relationships to the divine, and they challenged the exclusive nature of the priesthood. They were a ‘creative refusal’ (in Graeber’s terms) both of the power of the hakuma and the power of the gun to kill, and of the bany e bith clans to exclusively provide protection. MABIORDIT did not limit his seizure to the clans of the baany e biith. People could also call on MABIORDIT by sacrificing animals to him. This implied some agency to call on the divine through reverence and for protection, and this allowed his protection to be directly obtainable by a much larger number of people. As discussed above, the divine was democratised. The willingness of both MABIORDIT and MAGOTDIT to seize not only members of bany e bith clans challenged the monopoly baany e biith often claimed over close relations with the divine.
MAGOTDIT and MABIORDIT also reinforced the cosmic significance of the cattle camp as they were exclusively for those in the cattle camp. As discussed above, this was a period of the increased militarisation of the cattle camps and a growing focus on these cattle camp youth as a community defence.
9 Pendle, ‘“They Are Now Community Police”’. The focus of the free divinities on the cattle camp also suggested a new social order and new prominent social divisions that mimicked militarised re-orderings of the time. Based on her research in the post-CPA period, Cormack highlights the emergence of MABIORDIT as a challenge to the authority of the
baany e biith.Baany e biith sought to manage this competition including through co-option. One bany e bith sought to co-opt and not contest MAGOTDIT by acquiring this free divinity. For example, the cattle camp and community of the Amuk decided to acquire MAGOTDIT. This was possible by sacrificing animals to a cow and calling MAGOTDIT into the animal and into the camp. Deng, a brave warrior and son of a bany e bith, was seized by MAGOTDIT. In Deng, the power of MAGOTDIT and powers associated with the baany e biith were powerfully combined. They also became hereditary and passed on to his son Ngor Mabior. As Deng had MAGOTDIT, on his father’s death, the formal priesthood passed to his brother Wol. These two siblings became cooperative, although occasionally rivalrous, divine authorities.
In accounts since the 1980s, even if free divinities have challenged the exclusive power of bany e bith clans, baany e biith have still attempted to assert regulatory authority. They claim to have unique powers to recognise free divinities by making sacrifices and demanding that they declare their names. A bany e bith has the power to dedicate a cow to these free divinities through the sacrifice of a chicken or goat and through invocations over the cow. This interprets these new activities of free divinities as continuities of older cosmic and priestly hierarchies. Some baany e biith even themselves started to claim that they could offer protection from bullets.