As the god-like power of the hakuma continued despite the 2005 peace, divine authorities emerged to contest both the divine, arbitrary power of the hakuma and the prevalence of impurity that was bringing seemingly unending feuds. This chapter has focused on Nyachol’s seizure by MAANI in 2010 as an example of the proliferation of prophetic seizures in the post-CPA era. Nyachol evokes cultural archives to assert her divine authority and to allow her to use this authority as a strategy to confront the hakuma. At the same time, she creatively remade cultural archives to allow her to refuse some hakuma assertions, and especially the lack of pollution. Like some divine authorities to the west, she offered protection from bullets. She could also detect and resolve pollution, allowing a way to end the feud and bring peace. This gave prophetic figures a newly priestly role.
In Unity State, to the east of the Bilnyang and connected rivers, as elsewhere in Southern Sudan, the post-CPA era was a period where the youth faced demands to kill and the constant threat of being killed. Feuds were ongoing from the 1980s and 1990s, and new feuds were emerging. The youth were targets and killed in these intra-Nuer feuds. In this complex spiritual context, the possibility of peace was intimately connected with the possibility of purity and of reconciliation post-judicial peace. The youth supported these new Nuer prophets not only as they offered battlefield blessings and protection from bullets, but also as they had the power to resolve feuds through detection of nueer and the power to curse. The Nuer prophets, unlike the hakuma of the day, offered the possibility of peace without violent conflict through the ending of feuds.
Nyachol had a clear political vision and she reshaped culture as a way to refuse the politics and moral logics of the hakuma. She refused material items associated with the hakuma. At the same time, her rejection of the hakuma was morally contingent, allowing her to accept parts of the hakuma who did not contest her moral and spiritual authority. Ultimately it was not the hakuma that she rejected. Instead, it was hakuma’s assertions to be able to kill and act with immunity, beyond moral boundaries, that she violently contested.
Nyachol’s peace was still a violent peace. Her remaking of purity relied on her power to threaten a lethal curse. People confessed to killing, and feared reopening the feud, because MAANI threatened death. Entangled with this power to curse was also her command over many lethal guns. She sanctioned and blessed various deadly, armed raids. They were made in the name of justice, but they were physically violent and resulted in dozens of deaths. Her peace through the gun and the curse was hot and violent.