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ABSTRACT
Decades of militarized, violent conflict and elite wealth acquisition have created a common rupture in shared landscapes between communities of the western Dinka and Nuer (South Sudan). Through the remaking of these landscapes, governments and their wars have indirectly reshaped political identities and relationships. Networks of complex relationships have used this space for migration, marriage, trade and burial. Since the government wars of the 1980s, people from both Dinka and Nuer communities have participated in a myriad of cross-cutting political alliances with a lack of ethnic homogeneity. Yet, the recreation of this landscape as a militarized no-man’s land has stopped Nuer and Dinka meeting and is etching into the landscape naturalized visions of ethnic divisions. The article also examines how inhabitants have made use of the materiality of the landscape and imagination to try to contest and co-opt these visions. In so doing, they have challenged central governments’ powers to rule the landscape and have tried to recapture power to determine community relationships. However, elite politics in times of war and peace threaten people’s ability to express this more demographic authority over the landscape, relationships and political identities.
Acknowledgements
The article is based on a paper presented in September 2013 at the Danish Institute for International Studies. At the time, Jairo Munive and Douglas Johnson gave invaluable feedback. Funds for Women Graduates provided a grant that funded the time to complete the article. I am also grateful for the readers’ detailed contributions. Zoe Cormack’s work on landscape in Gogrial has been an inspiration and this article simply adds examples to a theme she discusses with great skill and passion. I am also grateful for the continued patience and ideas of current and former colleagues at LSE, including my supervisor Professor Tim Allen. Marc and Tiggy also provided vital help with the map. Yet, I give my greatest thanks is to my Nuer and Dinka research assistants, and their families who looked after me.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Watson, “A ‘Hardening of Lines’,” 202.
2. Johnson, “Briefing,” 300.
3. Hutchinson records how Riek Machar tried to distinguish ‘government war’. Hutchinson, “Nuer Ethnicity Militarized,” 6.
4. Luig and von Oppen, “Landscape in Africa,” 7.
5. Willow, “Conceiving Kakipitatapitmok,” 263.
6. For example, Daniels, Fields of Vision; Schama, Landscape and Memory. Also, see McGregor, Crossing The Zambezi, 2.
7. Johnson, “Enforcing Separate Identities.”
8. Interview with Nuer Chief, Ganyliel, 11 August 2014 (in Nuer).
9. Watson, “A ‘Hardening of Lines’.”
10. Watson, “A ‘Hardening of Lines’,” 202.
11. Leonardi, “‘Liberation’ or Capture.”
12. Jok and Hutchinson, “Sudan’s Prolonged Second Civil War.”
13. Johnson, “Briefing,” 300.
14. Johnson, The Root Causes.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., 116.
17. Thomas, A Slow Liberation, 74.
18. Hutchinson, “Violence, Legitimacy and Prophecy.”
19. De Waal, “When Kleptocracy,” 361.
20. Johnson, “Enforcing Separate Identities.”
21. Moore and Whelan, Heritage, Memory, x.
22. O’Keeffe, “Landscape and Memory.”
23. Cormack, “The Making and Remaking of Gogrial.”
24. Ingold, “The Temporality of the Landscape,” 152.
25. Bourdieu, “Social Space and Symbolic Power,” 23.
26. SDIT, Natural Resources, 3.
27. JIT, “The Equatorial Nile Project,” 8–9.
28. Willis, Upper Nile Province Handbook, 130.
29. Johnson, “Enforcing Separate Identities,” 5308.
30. Johnson, “Enforcing Separate Identities.”
31. Owen, “Fisherman’s Truce,” 27; JIT, “The Equatorial Nile Project,” 237.
32. Bender, Landscape; Ingold, “The Temporality of the Landscape”; Schama, Landscape and Memory.
33. Ingold, “The Temporality of the Landscape.”
34. Lienhardt, Divinity and Experience, 195.
35. Ibid.
36. SDIT, Natural Resources.
37. Thomas, A Slow Liberation, 37.
38. For an account of the arrival of government administration in Gogrial, see Cormack, “The Making and Remaking of Gogrial.”
39. Ingold, “Towards.”
40. Fontein, Remaking Mutirikwi.
41. Thomas, A Slow Liberation, 38.
42. Scott, The Art.
43. Descola, Beyond Nature and Culture, 48–9.
44. Cormack, “The Making and Remaking of Gogrial,” 29; Cormack, “Borders Are Galaxies.”
45. JIT, “The Equatorial Nile Project,” 37.
46. Collins Papers, “Troubles in Nuer Country.”
47. Willis, Upper Nile Province Handbook, 3.
48. Ordinance Survey, The Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.
49. Willis, Upper Nile Province Handbook, 1.
50. Thomas, A Slow Liberation, 38.
51. SSNA, Letter from Governor of UNP to Assistant District Commissioner of Western Nuer, 1 May 1929, UNP.5.A.3.31.57.
52. Collins Papers, “Troubles in Nuer Country.”
53. SSNA, Governor of UNP, UNP.5.A.3.31.35.
54. SSNA, Telegram to Governor from Richards (District Commissioner Eastern District), January 1930. UNP.5.A.3.31.97.
55. SSNA, Governor of UNP, UNP.5.A.3.31.35.
56. SSNA, UNP.5.A.3.31.94.
57. Ibid.
58. SSNA, Kamil, H. (Governor of UNP) UNP.5.A.3.31.20; SSNA Kidd (District Commissioner of Western Nuer District), UNP.5.A.3.31.33.
59. SSNA, Letter from Governor of UNP to Assistant District Commissioner of Western Nuer, 1 May 1929, UNP.5.A.3.31.57
60. Ibid.
61. SSNA, Governor of UNP, UNP.5.A.3.31.14.
62. SSNA, SSNA, Letter from Governor of UNP to Assistant District Commissioner of Western Nuer, 1 May 1929, UNP.5.A.3.31.57.
63. SSNA, Civil Secretary, 25 June 1929, UNP.5.A.3.31.71; SSNA UNP.5.A.3.31.94.
64. SSNA, Letter from Governor of UNP to Assistant District Commissioner of Western Nuer, 1 May 1929, UNP.5.A.3.31.57.
65. Ibid.
66. SSNA, Kidd (District Commissioner of Western Nuer District), UNP.5.A.3.31.1.
67. SSNA UNP.5.A.3.31.95.
68. SSNA, Richards Telegram to Kidd (District Commissioner WND), 3 June 1929, UNP.5.A.3.31.66; SSNA UNP.5.A.3.31.97.
69. SSNA, Richards Telegram to Kidd (District Commissioner WND), 3 June 1929, UNP.5.A.3.31.66.
70. SSNA UNP.5.A.3.31.97.
71. Johnson, “Colonial Policy and Prophets,” 14.
72. Ibid., 16.
73. Johnson, “Judicial Regulation.”
74. Interview with Dinka elder, Makuac (Warrap State), 11 March 2013 (in Dinka).
75. Cormack, “Making and Remaking Gogrial.”
76. LeRiche and Arnold, South Sudan, 72.
77. HRW, Sudan, Oil, and Human Rights; Cormack, “Making and Remaking Gogrial.”
78. Speech by Chief Gum Madiing, Wunlit, 1999.
79. Johnson, Root Causes, 69.
80. Ibid.
81. Jok and Hutchinson, “Sudan’s Prolonged.”
82. Pendle, “They Are Now.”
83. In 2012, western Nuer translating the term as ‘white soldiers’.
84. See, for example, multiple speeches at Wunlit; Hutchinson, “Nuer Ethnicity Militarized.” Johnson highlights that children had previously been the targeted in certain types of conflict but the scale of killings increased.
85. Hutchinson, “Nuer Ethnicity Militarized.”
86. Cormack, “Making and Remaking of Gogrial,” 258.
87. Wunlit.
88. Speech by Kulong Marial, Wunlit; Speech of Marial Malual Arop, Wunlit.
89. Cormack, “Making and Remaking of Gogrial.”
90. Interview, young man, Yiik Ador (Warrap State), 7 January 2012 (in English).
91. Interview, Executive Chief, Luonyaker (Warrap State), 18 February 2012 (in Dinka).
92. Interview, Haak Nuer man, Mayendit (Unity State), 23 April 2013.
93. Johnson, “Enforcing Separate Identities,” 5278.
94. Interview, Woman from Mayen Jur, Lietnhom (Warrap State), 15 March 2012 (in Dinka).
95. Interview, Executive Chief, Lietnhom (Warrap State), 12 November 2012 (in Dinka).
96. Interview, Yiirk Ador (Warrap State), 13 December 2011.
97. De Waal, “When Kleptocracy.”
98. Johnson, “The Nuer Civil Wars.”
99. Cormack, “Making and Remaking of Gogrial.”
100. Latour, “Paris.”
101. Pendle, “They Are Now.”
102. Cormack, “Making and Remaking of Gogrial,” 125.
103. Fontein, Remaking Mutirikwi.
104. Ingold, “The Temporality of the Landscape,” 152.
105. Interview, Amokpiny (Lakes State), 27 May 2012 (in Dinka).
106. Interview, Amokpiny (Lakes State), 28 May 2012 (in Dinka).
107. Domanska, “The Material Presence,” 340.