A key shift that was taking place was the prophetic merging with the role of the priesthood, and a growing emphasis on purity as the prophets tried to reinstate a moral, law- governed community. The Nuer civil wars of the 1990s and 2000s had not only brought excessive physical destruction, but also unprecedented spiritual and moral confusion. Brothers had fought on opposing sides and could not be certain that they had not slain their own kin. Commanders also often encouraged the slaying of women, children and the elderly. These large battles of government became entangled with local rivalries and became interpreted as feuds. The CPA and Juba Declaration had brought claims of political peace in Unity State and elsewhere. Yet, these intricate but deadly dilemmas were not addressed. As hakuma wars were entangled with local politics and cosmologies, the expectation of justice was either through compensation and judicial peace or through revenge. As the CPA was signed, chiefs from across Unity State listed hundreds of unsolved cases of killing that were now leading to cycles of revenge. The government formed a large chiefs’ court with chiefs from across the state to try to solve some of these cases and prevent violent, self-help justice. Yet, many feuds remained open. These courts had no power to end the feud.
For young men in Unity State at the time, these widespread feuds and voids of judicial redress had created a perpetual state of uncertainty and violence. They were expected to seek justice for their deceased kin, as well as find cattle (often through raiding) to satisfy the demands for a posthumous wife. At the same time, as almost all clans had slayers among them, any young man was vulnerable to attacks of revenge. Their personal culpability was immaterial in making them an appropriate target to cool the hearts of the family of the slain.
As they offered a solution to feuds and impurity, Nuer prophets like Nyachol quickly gained large followings among the armed youth. At the height of her popularity, hundreds gathered to her
luak on a daily basis. By late 2012 and early 2013, she was mobilising large, armed groups of over a thousand young men for raids against the Dinka.
1 NGO Security Working Group Meeting, Minutes, 20 February 2013.At the same time, the popular appeal of Nyachol for the youth also came through her promise of a judicial, ‘cool’ peace among the Nuer. She promised to re-establish the spiritual consequences of war and provide quasi-judicial punitive measures through reasserting the realities of pollution, and especially
nueer, after killing. She then offered to provide solutions to these deadly dilemmas including through judicial accountability for killing. As previously discussed, the scale of killing in the Western Nuer in the 1990s left Nuer confused about the continued relevance of
nueer and whether anyone had the spiritual authority to bring redress and healing.
2 Sharon Hutchinson, Nuer Dilemmas: Coping with Money, War, and the State (University of California Press, 1996), page 107.MAANI gave Nyachol the ability to recognise if someone was contaminated with
nueer. In an unresolved feud where the facts were disputed, she was able to point out the slayers. The chiefs’ courts had limited ability to investigate cases and, especially when guns were used, sometimes the killer was unknown to all. Nyachol’s knowledge of
nueer allowed her to settle cases and end feuds. Chiefs’ courts also started referring people to Nyachol to help establish the facts of the case.
3 Pendle, ‘Politics, Prophets and Armed Mobilizations’.Nyachol was also demanding local, senior
kuar muon to demonstrate their submission to her or risk losing their powers. She was asserting herself as the giver and taker of the powers to redress
nueer. For example, on one visit to Nyachol in 2013, I found a local, respected
kuaar muon in her
luak. Just behind him sat two large, finely decorated bulls. The bulls were a gift to Nyachol and a material sign of the
kuaar muon’s submission to her. However, she spent much of her time with him rebuking him for his tardy display of submission. When talking to this
kuaar muon I never worked out whether his submission to her was from fear of MAANI or fear of the large numbers of armed youth that supported Nyachol. Nyachol did not only offer healing from
nueer but enforced recognition of its dangers. She insisted that people needed to be free from
nueer before they could even approach her for protection and advice including protection from bullets in battle.
4 Evans-Pritchard, Nuer Religion, pages 293–294; Hutchinson, Nuer Dilemmas, pages 106–107.Nyachol’s logic of intra-Nuer peace upheld socio-legal norms that linked peace and the exchange to cattle compensation. Since the early twentieth century, this exchange of cattle had been embedded in the government-backed customary laws of the chiefs’ courts. Nyachol’s upholding of the customary law in many ways was akin to the historic patterns of governments who had sought to govern through the customary law. Yet, Nyachol sought to re-create the very nature of customary institutions by demanding that the customary laws be reintegrated with divine authority. Nyachol presented herself as the restorer and custodian of a Nuer-wide moral community that rebuilt a notion of a Nuer ‘customary’ past that is backed by divine and not government power. She is not only pushing back against the militarised power of government, but also the power of government as it has sought to capture and secularise the customary laws.
5 Pendle, ‘Politics, Prophets and Armed Mobilizations’.For the community’s armed young men, Nyachol offered a radical departure from the chaotic, dangerous socio-political order presented to them by governments at the time through violence and negotiated peace. However, Nyachol did not gain unanimous support. Many who were formally educated rejected the epistemologies of the prophets as ‘customary’ and outdated. In 2012 and 2013, the local church’s teaching explicitly condemned association and belief in Nyachol and other Nuer prophets. Among the older married men in the community there was an active debate that contrasted the powers of Nyachol with the powers of government.
Part of Nyachol’s vision of peace was also metaphorically ‘hot’.
6 Sharon Hutchinson and Naomi Pendle, ‘Violence, Legitimacy, and Prophecy: Nuer Struggles with Uncertainty in South Sudan’, American Ethnologist 42:3 (2015): 415–430. Through divine activity, including seizures, songs and invocations over animals for sacrifice, people had social space to rage against the violence, pain and betrayal in their lives. She also embraced the pervading, militarised sub-culture of the post-CPA Southern Sudan and helped her supporters build a strong, armed, militarised defence against government forces.
7 Ibid. Nyachol did not participate in battles and raids herself but her
luak became the place to gather, to plan and prepare for coordinated offensives. She was directly associated with the strategic decisions made before an offensive, including its timing and location.
8 Interviews with Nyachol’s supporters, in Nuer, and with Dinka in villages attacked by Nyachol’s supporters, February 2013, in Dinka. She would also guide combatants in relation to the moral boundaries that they should uphold in conflict.
The CPA had brought no justice against forces of the hakuma nor against specific political figures who had caused devastation to Mayendit and to other areas to the east of the Bilnyang. Instead, the CPA had elevated them to some of the highest positions of power in the current government hierarchies. Their elevation was an affront to the demands of the dead and also to the hot hearts of the living. In recognising the normative value of revenge against hakuma, Nyachol challenged the impunity of government to carry out violence and showed a willingness to limit government legitimacy and power through violence. Nyachol’s vision of the hakuma blurred this identity with a Dinka identity. Partly because many of those forces who had attacked her home villages had come from the home state of the leadership of the national government and had the guns during a period of government disarmament in Unity State, these categories of enmity were merged together. By the end of 2012, she was calling for a just war against the hakuma and Dinka, as if the two were synonymous.
Part of Nyachol’s appeal was her remaking of prophetic powers to protect her followers from bullets. Before cattle raids, young men could go to her for blessing. She also blessed tobacco that could be scattered over armed fighters as they entered battle. This was meant to make them impenetrable to bullets. In this way, the seizure of Nyachol by MAANI repeated the appeal of the seizure of young men by MABIORDIT to the west of the Bilnyang.