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Sudan
Southern Communities
In preindependence Sudan, most southern communities were small,
except for the large conglomerate of Nilotes, Dinka, and Nuer
who dominated the Bahr al Ghazal and the Aali an Nil provinces
and the Azande people of Al Istiwai Province. During the condominium,
the colonial administration imposed stronger local authority on
the communities. It made local leaders chiefs or headmen and gave
them executive and judicial powers--tempered by local councils,
usually of elders--to administer their people, under the scrutiny
of a British district commissioner. As in the north, the relatively
fluid relationships and boundaries among southern Sudanese became
more stabilized.
There is no systematic record of how independence, civil war,
and famine have affected the social order of southern peoples.
The gradual incorporation of southerners into the national system--if
only as migrant laborers and as local craftpeople--and increased
opportunities for education have, however, affected social arrangements,
ideas of status, and political views.
An educated elite had emerged in the south, and in 1991, some
members of this elite were important politicians and administrators
at the regional and national levels; however, other members had
emigrated to escape northern discrimination. How the newer elite
was linked to the older one was not clear. Secular chieftainships
had been mostly gifts of the colonial authorities, but the sons
of chiefs took advantage of their positions to get a Western education
and to create family ties among local and regional elites.
Southern Sudan's development of an elite based on education and
government office was facilitated by the absence of an indigenous
trading and entrepreneurial class, who might have challenged the
educated elite. Southern merchants were mostly Arabs or others
of nonsouthern origin. In addition, the south lacked the equivalent
of the northern Muslim leaders of religious orders, who also might
have claimed a share of influence. Instead of several elites owing
their status and power to varied sources and constituencies, the
south developed an elite that looked for its support to persons
of its own ethnic background and to those who identified with
the south's African heritage. It was difficult to assess in the
early 1990s, however, whether the civil war still allowed any
elite southerners to gain much advantage.
In traditional Nilotic society clans were of two kinds. One kind,
a minority but a large one, consisted of clans whose members had
religious functions and furnished the priests of subtribes, sections,
and sometimes of tribes. These priests have been called chiefs
or masters of the fishing spear, a reference to the ritual importance
of that instrument. Clans of the other kind were warrior groupings.
The difference was one of function rather than rank. A spearmaster
prayed for his people going to war or in other difficult situations
and mediated between quarreling groups. He could function as a
leader, but his powers lay in persuasion, not coercion. A spearmaster
with a considerable reputation for spiritual power was deferred
to on many issues. In rare cases--the most important was that
of the Shilluk--one of the ritual offices gained influence over
an entire people, and its holder was assigned the attributes of
a divine king.
A special religious figure--commonly called a prophet--has arisen
among some of the Nilotic peoples from time to time. Such prophets,
thought to be possessed by a sky spirit, often had much wider
influence than the ritual officeholders, who were confined to
specific territorial segments. They gained substantial reputations
as healers and used those reputations to rally their people against
other ethnic groups and sometimes against the Arabs and the Europeans.
The condominium authorities considered prophets subversive even
when their message did not apparently oppose authority, and suppressed
them.
Another social pattern common to the Nilotes was the age-set
system. Traditionally, males were periodically initiated into
sets according to age; with the set, they moved through a series
of stages, assuming and shedding rights and responsibilities as
the group advanced in age. The system was closely linked to warfare
and raiding, which diminished during the condominium. In modern
times the civil war and famine further undermined the system,
and its remnants seemed likely to fade as formal education became
more accessible.
Historically, the Dinka have been the most populous Nilotic people,
so numerous that social and political patterns varied from one
tribal group to another. Among the Dinka, the tribal group was
composed of a set of independent tribes that settled in a continuous
area. The tribe, which ranged in size from 1,000 to 25,000 persons,
traditionally had only two political functions. First, it controlled
and defended the dry season pastures of its constituent subtribes;
second, if a member of the tribe killed another member, the issue
would be resolved peacefully. Homicide committed by someone outside
the tribe was avenged, but not by the tribe as a whole. The colonial
administration, seeking equitable access to adequate pasturage
for all tribes, introduced a different system and thus eliminated
one of the tribe's two responsibilities. In postindependence Sudan,
the handling of homicide as a crime against the state made the
tribe's second function also irrelevant. The utilization and politicization
of ethnic groups as units of local government have supported the
continuation of tribal structures into the 1990s; however, the
tribal chiefs lacked any traditional functions, except as sage
advisers to their people in personal and family matters. In the
contemporary period, some attempts have been made to transform
these ethnic tribal structures in order to produce a national
or at least a greater subnational identity. For instance, in the
early formation of the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM),
one of the main ideological tenets was the need to produce a new
nonnorthern riverine area solidarity based on the mobilization
of diverse ethnic groups in deprived areas. Although its success
has been limited, to achieve this new sense of solidarity it has
attempted to recruit not only southerners, but also the Fur, Funj,
Nuba, and Beja communities.
The subtribes were the largest significant political segments,
and they were converted into subchiefdoms by the colonial government.
Although the subchiefs were stripped of most of their administrative
authority during the Nimeiri regime (1969-85) and replaced by
loyal members of the Sudan Socialist Union, the advice of subchiefs
was sought on local matters. Thus, a three-tiered system was created:
the traditional authorities, the Sudanese civil service, and the
political bureaucrats from Khartoum. During the 1980s, this confused
system of administration dissolved into virtual anarchy as a result
of the replacement of one regime by another, civil war, and famine.
In the south, however, the SPLM created new local administrative
structures in areas under its control. In general, thus, although
severely damaged, the traditional structure of Nilotic society
remained relatively unchanged. Loyalties to one's rural ethnic
community were deeply rooted and were not forgotten even by those
who fled for refuge to northern urban centers.
Data as of June 1991
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