Nyachol also attempted to make the hakuma accountable through the application of Nuer customary law. For example, in July 2013, I had heard that Nyachol had suddenly moved to another luak near Ler. She had dreamt of a Dinka raid from the west and so hoped to move to a safer place deeper inside Nuer settlements. I wondered how her perceived need to flee was challenging her assertions of control over the landscape.
When my research assistant (Gatluak) and I started our journey to visit her, we were deep into the wet season months. The flood plains were coated in deep water that had overflowed from the Nile and the Bilynang River System. Locally built dykes were dotted across the landscape as a means to control the flooding and also to provide walkable routes between settlements. We walked along in single file, jumping over the holes in the dyke where the muddied pile had deteriorated. The water flowed through, unthreatened by human attempts to contain it.
On our arrival, some of Nyachol’s youth came out to greet us. We were welcomed. Yet, they had come out to meet us to warn Gatluak that he should not come any closer to the luak. He was ‘polluted’ and, therefore, could not come close to Nyachol without deadly consequences. Gatluak’s paternal cousin had killed a man near Bentiu a few days before. Gatluak’s cousin was a policeman and had been sent by his commanding officer with other policemen to arrest a man. When the man saw the policemen approaching, he hid inside his mud-walled tukal. From there, he fired a gun out of the hut towards them. He failed to hit any of the policemen. Gatluak’s cousin returned fire in the direction of the tukal. He could not see the man but the shots inflicted a fatal injury. Nyachol sent a message to Gatluak that he and his family could not approach her luak until compensation had been paid through the chiefs’ courts and until a sacrifice had been made to end the nueer. The messenger made it clear to Gatluak that Nyachol had nothing personal against him, but that MAANI could not tolerate this pollution and impurity, and that she wanted Gatluak to be safe until his family had met their obligations under the customary law.
By demanding compensation from Gatluak’s family, Nyachol was making it clear that his cousin’s act, even when an act of the government (as it was done when he was on duty and obeying commands as a policeman), was still bound by the Nuer customary law and the cosmic dangers of nueer. For Nyachol, the cousin’s membership of government was immaterial. She was erasing the distinction between government and non-government, and demanding equal expectations of Nuer, whether they were acting on behalf of the government or not. Nyachol bound government employees to the same legal obligations as private individuals and entrenched the same spiritual consequences. As a Nuer prophet, Nyachol was able to challenge government distinctness and impunity by reasserting the power of divinity behind the law. At the time, Gatluak’s cousin and his family were challenging in the chief’s courts in Bentiu the necessity for the family to pay compensation. They were arguing that, as he was a policeman following orders, he did not need to pay. However, Gatluak did not hesitate to obey Nyachol’s instructions that day.