Cormack has carefully described the histories of MABIORDIT and their role in providing spiritual protection and mitigating spiritual consequences, including during fighting with guns.
1 Cormack, ‘The Making and Remaking of Gogrial’. As noted in Chapter 6, MABIORDIT emerged in Tonj in the 1980s but only really became prevalent in Gogrial in the 2000s, during these periods of conflict in Warrap State. In the 2005 Mayen Rual Peace Conference, MABIORDIT appears to still mainly be associated with Greater Tonj. Yet, patterns of conflict were also prompting groups from Greater Gogrial and groups from Greater Tonj to fight together. In Cormack’s research in 2012, MABIORDIT was described as widespread. However, by 2018, there were only a handful of men thought to be possessed by MABIORDIT in Gogrial.
Some individuals possessed by MABIORDIT directly challenged the hakuma. Youth leader Thiik’s seizure by MABIORDIT protected him during battles. He could not be killed by bullets, even of the hakuma. He was particularly feared in battle because of this inability to be easily killed. He was surrounded by supporters including military leaders, and this allowed him to demand war and peace against the wishes of the hakuma. Not only were they potentially more physically powerful than the state government, MABIORDIT also meant that this power was directly connected to divine cosmologies that, by their very nature, challenged the government’s superior divinity.
The hakuma has repeatedly used peace meetings in Gogrial to regulate MABIORDIT and to grant the government power to kill with impunity. For example, one of the resolutions at the 2005 Mayen Jur conference read:
All persons reported to have been infested by a war kunyjuur by the name ‘MABIORDIT’ and who live or have come to those conflict areas to direct and fuel the wars, are to be arrested forthwith, and the Commanders of the Peace Keeping Forces are here directed to use force against resistance from such kunyjuurs. This use of force can include killing should the kunyjuur use force to resist arrest.
2 Mayen Rual Peace Conference 2005, page 32.At the peace meetings, government and chiefs’ discourse used language to delegitimise MABIORDIT.
Kunyjuur, more commonly written as
kujur, itself presented MABIORDIT in foreign, derogatory terms.
Kujur was a colloquial Arabic word used by governments, including the Anglo-Egyptian government, to lump together a variety of divine authorities.
3 Douglas Johnson, ‘C.A. Willis and the “Cult of Deng”: A Falsification of the Ethnographic Record’, History in Africa 12 (1985), 131–150. Chiefs also questioned the contemporary relevance of MABIORDIT. They argued that it was not a customary power and, therefore, not part of the Dinka cosmological hierarchies. At most it was conceded as of temporary use during the SPLA-GoS wars. As one man asserted at the Mayen Rual Conference in 2005:
There was nothing called MABIORDIT in the past. The SPLA might have called or allowed MABIORDIT to assist the Movement in their wars with the Nuers, the Government and the Murahelein. They have overdone their mandate. They disarmed the chiefs and the authorities.
4 Man of Lou-Ariik, Tonj North County, Mayen Rual Peace Conference 2005, page 26.MABIORDIT was presented as equivalent to the guns of the 1990s that had been distributed to the youth of Gogrial to act as a home guard for the SPLA. In the 1990s, the young men from Gogrial provided an important local defence allowing SPLA soldiers to be a safety station in the area and in proximity to key sites such as the Unity State oilfields and cities such as Wau. Yet, now the claim was that these guns were undermining chiefly and government authority by distributing to large numbers of youth powers to kill. At the same time, for the young men, their guns and MABIORDIT offered protection.
The government’s attempted regulation of MABIORDIT was violent. In 2018, the executions of youth associated with MABIORDIT were an explicit attempt to regulate MABIORDIT. However, the government’s failure to capture Thiik ended up only affirming his powers. The government had captured and executed some of his close supporters. Thiik had even been previously arrested himself and imprisoned at the military barracks in Wunyiik. Yet, he escaped. For some this affirmed his divine authority. For others, his support from parts of the
hakuma. As one chief explained, ‘[w]hat has lengthened this war up to now is that we are governing ourselves. If your cousin is arrested and imprisoned, and if you are working in the police, then you release him illegally’.
5 Chief, Ajiep Peace Conference, 20 April 2020.Those of the hakuma did try to disarm the armed home guard and did try to suppress MABIORDIT, yet the tension between these young men and the hakuma was not consistent. Many in the hakuma elite also armed and encouraged these young men. Crucially, MABIORDIT provided the young men with their own political space and independent source of authority.