[The following book excerpt is published to mark Southern Sudan’s independence on July 9, 2011]
The Sudan conflicts are said to have their genesis in the sixth century when the Nubians first encountered Christianity. More recently British aspirations to join the south of Sudan with Uganda failed in 1947 when an agreement in Juba unified Southern and Northern Sudan. In 1955 dissent among southern soldiers fuelled the first Sudanese civil war that continued until 1972. Eleven years of an unstable peace was sandwiched between the first and second civil wars. The second civil war—from 1983 to 2005—was the bloodiest.
The government of Khartoum in the north coveted natural resources in the south—oil, water, gold, and minerals—transporting them north. Nothing much moved south in return. A clean-cut division between the Arab Muslim north and the African Christian south was therefore complicated and protracted. African Muslims traditionally co-existed with Arabs, but in Southern Sudan at the border region between the north and the south, the Arabs drove the Nubian African Muslims from their land, and they eventually joined forces with the African Dinka Christians against the northerners.
Throughout the conflict, neighboring countries as well as others, including America, Egypt, and Nigeria, attempted to bring peace to the region. Eventually, General Lazaro Sumbeiywo, a Kenyan mediator, brokered the peace agreement. With the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in January 2005, Rumbek in Lakes State became the interim regional capital of the new Southern Sudan. Contentiously, Juba competed with Rumbek to become the capital. The tropical, cooler climate and greener landscape of Juba was an advantage. Detractors said it was too close to its neighboring countries and was prone to earthquakes. Others said that the deep-rooted tension between the Dinka and Equatorians would make Juba a place of tension with no sense of unity and an unlikely choice as capital. Some believed that these tensions in the south weakened southern unity against the oppression of the north.
Hence, the Sudan conflicts were a complex entanglement of tension and dissention based on issues of colonialism, religions, ethnicities, tribes, races, traditional occupations, geographical resources, transit routes, and cross border movements. In addition there were internal tribal disputes between individuals over child abductions, wives, land, water, cattle, and property. If the north-south conflict was the equivalent of an earthquake, tribal tensions were tantamount to micro-fracturing.
Nevertheless, Juba assumed capital status in October 2005, due in part to its role as a transport junction connecting it to Kenya, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The roads, severely damaged by bombing, water damage, and lack of maintenance, were in the process of being demined. With landmines removed, the roads would provide gateways to Southern Sudan.
The first parliamentary session, in December 2005, heralded the signing of Southern Sudan’s first Constitution. It was a memorable time, not only politically, but also historically. Thousands of Dinka herders drove a million head of trimmed long horned cattle through the wide streets of Juba. Clouds of fine dust forced herders to cover their noses with handkerchiefs while residents sneezed or coughed up the irritant. Traffic was rerouted and vendors temporarily relocated their roadside stalls to avoid destruction by clumsy flabby-necked cattle.
Cattle-keeping was not typical of tribes in The Sudan, mainly pastoralists, with the conspicuous exception of the Bor Dinka from Upper Nile. There they had permanent and specific cattle migration routes from the wetland pastures of the Toich near the Nile, used in the dry season, to the grasses of Aying in the east used in the wet season. The Bor Dinka moved to Juba during the second civil war. After fifteen years, returning to their native soil after the Comprehensive Peace Agreement was not without trouble. The local tribes of Juba, unhappy with cattle tramping over their crops and chasing away their bees, denied the Dinka access to the migration route to Upper Nile, resulting in sporadic disputes. After months of negotiations and peace committees, community leaders eventually approved the exodus, with conditions. Hence, it came to be that the movement of cattle back to their original homeland was conducted in stages; ten thousand cattle at a time over a period of ten days. The Dinka were taking their cattle home. Across the White Nile and over the bridge, it was the largest migration of cattle the region had ever seen.
Extract from “The Sudan Curse” by Martina Nicolls, available in hardcopy, softcover, and Kindle at amazon.com
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