If the post-CPA period was meant to be a period of peace, in Warrap State, it was a period of violent peace as it brought new ambiguities and new forms of armed and deadly conflict. Warrap State’s experience of this period was uniquely shaped by it being the homeland of South Sudan’s president and a powerful cadre of Warrap-born government and military leaders who became increasingly powerful during Salva Kiir’s premiership. Therefore, for the first time, at a local, state and national level, people in Warrap State experienced an autochthonous hakuma – a hakuma that was made up of brothers and sons of the community. An autochthonous hakuma brought various and contradictory dilemmas, especially in the context of the CPA’s reshaping of the political economy. The CPA’s liberal vision resulted in the Land Act and the remaking of the meaning and value of land. Militaries with private loyalties also became central to state power. Both of these resulted in members of the hakuma drawing on and reasserting themselves as autochthonous – as part of and one with their communities – in order to make claims over labour and land. At the same time, to be recognised as hakuma, they needed to assert supernatural power and impunity; they needed to assert their distinction from the communities they wanted to govern over. In this context of ambiguities and contradictory contestations, the autochthonous hakuma often asserted their power by creatively re-narrating the cultural archive (which they knew) and creatively reshaping culture. They used cultural norms to make conflicts to claim new forms of violence and to describe conflicts as unending in ways that allowed them to mobilise labour and secure claims over land.