Some of the most powerful actions of the church in the Bilnyang towards peace have not been through peace meetings themselves. Instead, they have come when the church has been able to challenge and remake the cultural archive to be more inclusive. Rituals of burial, as with rituals of peace, can make communities more exclusive or inclusive. Backed with the power of the gun, through their proximity to government, churches have been able to enforce rituals that are more inclusive and that dampen divisions.
An incident in Tochriak in 2015 provides an example. In Tochriak, alongside temporary shelters and NGO compounds, is a football pitch. When teams play, they attract a crowd. Yet, if you look carefully, one area of the football pitch has grass that grows a more vivid green than the rest of the pitch. People avoid running here.
In 2015, the government commander in Ler sent out six local government soldiers to scout out the area in preparation for an attack on Tochriak. They had been captured by SPLA-IO-aligned gojam and brought to the SPLA-IO general in a luak at the administrative centre. While waiting for the IO general to question them, a man had run into the luak and stabbed one of them. He demanded revenge as his son had recently been killed by government soldiers. However, the IO general stopped the man from killing the captured soldier. After the general had finished his questioning of the soldiers, other gojam (cattle guards) joined the father’s demand for the death of the soldiers to satisfy their demand for revenge. They dragged the six men out to kill them. Some of the local NGO workers tried to object. Yet, as the soldiers tried to flee, they were shot dead on the football ground.
The deaths of these soldiers and the continued presence of their bodies raised new spiritual dilemmas. Once they had fallen, they were not touched. The
gojam talked to each other of a fear of burying them. Knowing that many from their community had died without burial fighting government soldiers, for many, burial seemed too dignified, and neglectful of the revenge demanded by their own dead. People also spoke about a fear that burial would bring a
bit (curse) into the land that would increase their own vulnerability to death.
1 Interview with NGO worker working near Ler who witnessed these events, Juba, 2018. They drew on cultural archives about the potential to pollute the land to cement their concerns about their burial.
The following day was a Sunday and people gathered in the local church. In Tochriak many of those who attend church are the more educated and also associated with the hakuma – the IO commanders and generals, and those who have jobs with the NGOs. Some gojam also attend to sing in the choir.
That morning one NGO worker stood up and spoke against the refusal to bury the government soldiers. He highlighted the public health dangers and his concerns that hyenas would gain a taste for human blood. He also challenged any fears of a
bit and argued that there was a duty to bury the dead. The IO general was attending church and briefly said that he agreed with the speech of the NGO worker. He was arguing for a shared moral community that was not limited to the IO supporters. He argued that government and SPLA-IO supporters shared a common humanity before God and that they should not be excluded from post-death rituals.
2 Interview with church attendee, 2016, by telephone.That day the NGO worker and other church attendees went from church to bury the dead. The IO general went with them to stop the gojam violently protesting and to make it clear that he supported the initiative for the good of the Tochriak community. They dug a shallow grave and buried the six soldiers together. The gojam continued to petition the general and threatened to dig up the bodies, but the general’s insistence and their appreciation of the problem of having bodies so central in the community encouraged them to accept the decision. In this instance, the church’s notions of burial and treatment of the dead had prevailed. At the same time, it had highlighted their reliance on the might of the powers of the hakuma and their connection with it.