The Limits to Capital

Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the legacy of late colonialism

It’s been a long time since academic discussions about research and teaching were part of the board meetings of the department of Anthropology and Sociology of the University of Amsterdam. Most of our meetings today deal with administrative problems [...]

Seeing like a State.

Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and history in colonial Africa

Mampilly provides a sophisticated and challenging approach to thinking about how rebel groups govern their territories, and the implications of this process. The book comprises three conceptual cha...

Rebel rulers: insurgent governance and civilian life during war

South Sudan became Africa's newest nation in 2011, following decades of armed conflict. Chiefs - or 'traditional authorities' - became a particular focus of attention during the international relief effort and post-war reconstruction and state-building. But 'traditional' authority in South Sudan has been much misunderstood. Institutions of chiefship were created during the colonial period but originated out of a much longer process of dealing with predatory external forces. This book addresses a significant paradox in African studies more widely: if chiefs were the product of colonial states, why have they survived or revived in recent decades? By examining the long-term history of chiefship in the vicinity of three towns, the book also argues for a new approach to the history of towns in South Sudan. Towns have previously been analysed as the loci of alien state power, yet the book demonstrates that these government centres formed an expanding urban frontier, on which people actively sought knowledge and resources of the state. Chiefs mediated relations on and across this frontier, and in the process chiefship became central to constituting both the state and local communities.B R> Cherry Leonardi is a Lecturer in African History at Durham University, a former course director of the Rift Valley Institute's Sudan course, and a member of the council of the British Institute in Eastern Africa Published in association with the British Institute in Eastern Africa.

Dealing with Government in South Sudan: Histories of Chiefship, Community and State

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. RESUME Cet article etudie des histoires orales et des debats de chefs specifiques aux lendemains de la guerre de la SPLA au sein de deux chefferies du Sud du Soudan. Il soutient que ces histoires locales sont tres revelatrices de la relation historique entre l'Etat et la societe (et notamment la mediation de la violence externe), qui est centrale pour comprendre la legitimite de l'autorite locale. Au lieu d'etre le bras fort de l'Etat, les chefs ont idealement joue le role de mediateurs et detourne la violence d'Etat (et des rebelles). Contrairement a d'autres exemples africains, ils ont ete marginaux en termes de structures de propriete fonciere et de patriclan, de sorte que la chefferie a offert une definition plus inclusive et pragmatique de la communaute que ne l'ont fait les discours patrilineaires. Comme ailleurs dans le Sud du Soudan, les premiers chefs etaient souvent des mediateurs indirects avec des origines marginales ou exterieures, et leur acces a la force gouvernementale a ete contrebalance par l'autorite continue des chefs de pluie, des anciens, des lignages superieurs et des "oncles maternels". Les actions de gouvernance actuelles qui traitent les chefs comme les gardiens exclusifs des terres et des coutumes de la communaute peuvent etre en contradiction avec les interpretations locales du role du chef. Les histoires orales des origines des chefs refletent un accord symbolique passe avec le gouvernement et avec les chefs, par lequel ces derniers utilisent leur "bon parler" pour regler les problemes de violence par la mediation et, si necessaire, se sacrifient pour "sauver" les personnes de la force exterieure/gouvernementale. ********** Two elderly chiefs from the same clan of the Sudanese Kakwa came to live in Yei Town, after it was captured in 1997 by the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) from Government of Sudan (GoS) forces. One of them, 'Simon', suffers from chest complaints, which he attributes to his torture by SPLA soldiers in the early 1990s: according to witnesses, he was tied and stretched with ropes as well as beaten. (1) As a mere headman, he is bitter about the attempted self-promotion to full chiefship of his neighbouring sub-chief and town court member, 'Ezekia'. Ezekia became a chief around the same time that Simon suffered his torture; when the majority of people fled from the SPLA to take refuge in the town or in nearby Uganda, the remaining rural population were told that the SPLA 'worked with someone called a chief', and Ezekia was duly selected to perform this role. …

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Violence, sacrifice and chiefship in Central Equatoria, southern Sudan

This paper challenges the prevailing focus on ethnic division and conflict in Southern Sudan in recent years, demonstrating that even within ethnically divisive debates over land, there are shared, transethnic levels of moral concern. These concerns centre on the commodification and monetisation of rural and kinship resources, including human life itself, epitomised in ideas of land being bought with blood, or blood being turned into money by the recent wartime economy. It argues that the enduring popular ambivalence towards money derives not only from its commonly observed individualising properties, but also from the historical association of money with government. Southern Sudanese perceive historical continuity in government consumption and corruption, and express concern at the expansion of its alternative value system into rural economies during and since the war. Whilst seeking to access money and government, they nevertheless continue to employ a discursive but powerful dichotomy between the moral worlds of state and kinship.

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Paying ‘buckets of blood’ for the land: moral debates over economy, war and state in Southern Sudan*

Generational tension and youth crisis have been prominent themes in recent analyses of civil conflict in Africa. Field research in Southern Sudan in 2004–2006 suggests that the analysis does not fit the Sudanese war. This article examines a structural opposition between the sphere of military/government (the ‘hakuma’) and the sphere of ‘home’. It argues that to be a ‘youth’ in Southern Sudan means to inhabit the tensions of the space between these spheres. While attempting to resist capture by either sphere, youth have used their recruitment by the military to invest in their home or family sphere. Their aspiration to ‘responsibility’ illustrates not generational rebellion, but the moral continuity in local society, also evident in discussions of marriage.

‘Liberation’ or capture: Youth in between ‘hakuma’, and ‘home’ during civil war and its aftermath in Southern Sudan

The Torit Mutiny of August 1955 in southern Sudan did not trigger a civil war, but state violence and disorder escalated over the following years. We explore how the outlook and strategies of the government officials who inherited the state apparatus of the Anglo-Egyptian condominium contributed to this development. They perpetuated authoritarian and violent government practices based on a legalistic distinction between citizen and outlaw, while justifying their actions as part of a developmentalist and nationalistic discourse. The Mutiny created fear of another outbreak of violence which prompted recourse to collective punishment, an expanded intelligence network and bolstered the powers and mandate of the chiefs. However, the authoritarian tendencies were paired with developmentalism and the desire to educate and civilise the southerners. Through education and the justice and penal system, they were to be ‘made to learn’ how to become ‘modern’. This combination of perpetuating colonial government practices and fervent nationalism resonates with analyses of transitions to independence elsewhere in Africa, from which the case of southern Sudan has been largely excluded up to now.

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Cherry Leonardi

Papers

Dealing with Government in South Sudan: Histories of Chiefship, Community and State

Violence, sacrifice and chiefship in Central Equatoria, southern Sudan

Paying ‘buckets of blood’ for the land: moral debates over economy, war and state in Southern Sudan*

‘Liberation’ or capture: Youth in between ‘hakuma’, and ‘home’ during civil war and its aftermath in Southern Sudan

Discourses of violence in the transition from colonialism to independence in southern Sudan, 1955-1960