Violence, Sacrifice and Chiefship in Central Equatoria, Southern Sudan

Abstract

This article explores specific oral histories and chiefship debates in the aftermath of the SPLA war in two Southern Sudanese chiefdoms. It argues that these local histories reveal much about the historical relationship between state and society – and in particular the mediation with external violence – which is central to understanding the legitimacy of local authority. Rather than being the strong arm of the state, chiefs have ideally mediated and deflected state (and rebel) violence. Unlike other African examples, they have been marginal both in landowning and patrician structures, so that chiefship has offered a more inclusive and pragmatic definition of community than have patrilineal discourses. As elsewhere in Southern Sudan, the early chiefs were often proxy mediators with marginal or outside origins and their access to government force has been balanced by the continuing authority of rain chiefs, elders, senior lineages and ‘maternal uncles’. Current governance interventions which treat chiefs as sole custodians of community land and customs may not be compatible with local understandings of the role of the chief. Oral histories of chiefship origins reflect a symbolic bargain made with government and with chiefs, whereby the latter use their ‘good speech’ to mediate violence, and if necessary sacrifice themselves to ‘bail’ people from external/government force.