A Political and Cultural History of the Jii-speaking Peoples of Eastern Africa

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A POLITICAL AND CULTURAL HISTORY OFTHE JII-SPEAKING PEOPLES OF EASTERN AFRICA

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Designed and Typeset by Desktop Publishing Unit Section, Institute of Research and Postgraduate Studies, Maseno University, PO Box 333, MASENO Tel: +254-351622/351011

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A POLITICAL AND CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE JII-SPEAKING PEOPLES OF EASTERN AFRICA

Prof. Bethwell A. Qgot, Ph.D. Emeritus Professofof History, Maseno University, and Olancellor, Moi University

ANYANGE PRESS LTD. P.O. BOX 2034, I With the establishment of colonial rule in the twentieth century, many of these townships such as Pocala, Nyighum, Teedo, Utaalo, disintegrated, because the lineages moved back to their ancestral shrines. In fact by 1935, when Evans - Pritchard was collecting his material on the Anywaa, only Ukaadi town had not disintegrated. The Anywaa had two different but related political systems which had the same structural character. Each of these political systems was led by a nyiya (king) or a kwaro (chief) whose political authority did not prevail over the other. Their evolution and development throw much light on the political systems of the Jii-speakers. The two political and social groups - the Ji-nyiye (people of the kings) and the Jo-kwan· (people of the chiefs) into which the Anywaa were divided, were further classified according to the political and social stratification of each group. The Ji-Nyiye traced their descent from Gilo, while the Jo-Kwari trace their descent from ancestors whom they claim came to the Sobat together with Gilo, or foreigners who were captured on the migration routes and brought along to the Sobat, O! those who were the original inhabitants of the Sobat region who were gradually subdued and assimilated by the Anywaa during their occupation of the Sobat Valley. During the early stages of the evolution of the Anywaa as a distinct ethnic community, there was a fierce struggle for political power between the leaders of the two groups, which resulted in their separatio~ with the Ji-Nyiyeand Jo-Kwan·each forming its own separate, autonomous and self - contained villages. As we have already stated, these autonomous villages became the largest political and economic

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units from where the two political systems were gradually developed to provide leadership for each village community. The leadership of the village of Ji-Nyiye was provided by a nyipem noble man whose father must have been a nyiya. Similarly, the leadership of the village of Jo-Kwariwas provided by an ur-kwaro (son of a chief) whose qualification to the office was that his father was a chief before him. Soon, the ur-lauaroor chiefs had to compete for political power with a noble clan, the nyiye. The nobles were members of a single patrilineal clan spread throughout Anywaaland who succeeded in displacing chiefs in many villages. In economic terms, they created a wider and more prestigious exchange network based on the nyiye which provided more security and status than obtained prior to this development. But later, the nobles themselves started to fight among themselves, especially after obtaining rifles from Ethiopia towards the end of the nineteenth century. This struggle for power led to the dispersals of clans and the amalgamation of lineage groups into small townships. This was perhaps because the existing social and hierarchical relations could no longer be supported by their economic underpinnings. There was therefore a realignment of social and economic arrangentents involving the co-ordination of individuals more into localized territorial units and less into widespread hierarchical networks. In the new economic and social environment, hierarchical tensions were re-directed into spacial oppositions. Hence, it was to the courts of powerful nobles that refugees flocked and young men came from all parts of the country to seek their fortunes. The result was that big villages like Utalo, Ajuara, Ukaadi and Adongo, which developed at this time and which were seats of powerful nobles, had mixed populations. These are what Evans - Pritchard referred to as "village states", which as he rightly points out, resembled those found in Weste11t Acholi.(37) Three of the most important nobles to emerge at

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this time were Udiel-wa-Kuat, Uliimi-wa-Agaanya and Akwei-waCam.

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= The Gambella region fell within the orbit of the expanding Ethiopian empire during the 1880s. The occupation of the Sobat valley by the Jiispeakers had also coincided with the appearance of the Arab slave raiders in the area. Soon the Mahdists came to the area for slaves and cattle. In 1898, the Anglo - Egyptian forces appeared in the Sobat and Pibor valleys. To the }ii-speakers, these were just another horde of foreigners, like the previous ones, coming to their country to loot, and take away their cattle, children and women by force. The struggle for the Nile Valley between Egypt, Brjtain, France and Ethiopia resulted in much suffering for the }ii-speakers. On May 2, 1902, the Anglo - Ethiopian frontier treaty was signed. Ethiopian imperial agents extracted wealth such as ivory, slaves and cattle from Gambella. In return, the Anywaa and Naath leaders obtained large quantities of guns that had originally been provided by the European powers to Emperor Menelik Il. With the help of those guns, local leaders managed to maintain their autonomy until the 1920s, manipulating rivalries between the empire and the British. Between 1936 and 1941, the Anywaa region experienced the Italian occupation and the battles between British and Italian forces, with many Anywaa men becoming soldiers and porters on both sides. During the post-war administration under Emperor Haile Selassie, Gambella was largely ignored. The Anywaa were allowed to maintain their political institutions working under the nyiye (nobles) and kruaari (village chiefs). But the socialist regime (Derg) which toppled the Emperor in 1974, brought new ideas of development and implemented a number of agricultural projects in Gambella. The traditional political

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system of the Anywaa was abolished, the nyiye and lcwflllri deposed, songs and dances in praise of hereditary political leaders, hereditary office of the "father or owner of the land (wa-ngommr) who organized communal hunts and fishing and bore ritual responsibility, body cicatrisation, extraction of six lower teeth - all these were banned by the Derge on the ground that they were"feudal"," reactionary'' or" anti.revolutionary." People were organized into peasan.t, women and youth associations. The Anywaa were herded to live in "integrated villages" and about 50,000 to 60,000 foreign settlers were imported &om the Ethiopian highlands and settled in Anywaaland. No wonder the Anywaa look back with nostalgia to the pre-Revolution period, which is today very much idealiV!d and romanticized. To them, their world had crumbled with the Revolution. The major sources of Anywaa resentment against the Derge were alienation of their own land, heavy taxation, forced recruitment of young men into the "national" service to fight a war in the north they had little to do with. This resentment led to a revolt in 1979 and the formation of the Gambella People's Liberation Movement in 1985.(GPLM) During the last four decades of the twentieth century, Gambella region experienced the effects of the two Civil wars in the Sudan (1955 -1972; 1983 to the present). It was the area where large numbers of Sudanese refugees were received. After 1983, when the second civil war began in the Sudan, again a huge number of southern Sudanese sought refuge in Gambella, and the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army (SPLA) established military and administrative bases there. By 1990, the number of refugees had reached 355,000. They settled at Itang and Pinyundo refugee camps located in Anywaaland. Many of the Naath who came form the Sudan side were not registered as refugees but settled down in various parts of Gambella and became Ethiopian citizens. In this way, with the coming of settlers &om the highlands,

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refugees and the Naath immigrants, the Anywaa became a minority in their own homeland. (38) They were truly under siege. Under the new policy of federalism based on ethic nationalism established in 1995, this region (or' state') now has its own government as one of the eight regions that comprise the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. The Anywaa and the Naath are the two major ethnic groups (or "nationalities" in the Ethiopian official terminology). But what is an ethnic state shorn of its traditional social and political institutions?

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CHAPTER NINE The Great Encounter Since earlier historical times, the Nile Valley has provided a link between the interior of Africa and the rest of the world. For example, trade between the interior of Africa and the Mediterranean Basin, along the Nile Valley, was already well established in the days of the Pharaohs. The commodities that moved northwards were pretty much the same all through history: gold, ivory, slaves, leopard skins, ebony, ostrich feathers, eggshells and incense. The manufactured. goods that moved southward varied somewhat according to the taste of particular ages, but included bronze ware, glass, honey, oils, wine, cosmetics and scents. It is important to note that the commodities involved in the Nile trade were luxuries both for the Nubians and for the Egyptians, and they did not affect basic subsistence level of either people. At its peak, however, the Nile trade provided the economic mainstay both for the post-pharaonic empire of Kush and for the medieval Christian kingdoms of Makouria and Alwa. These were, almost certainly, the first of the many great African empires that arose as a direct consequence of the development of trans-Sahara trade. The next major events in the history of the Nile Valley were the Christianiution of Nubia and the Islamization of Egypt. In the middle of the sixth century, the whole of Nubia was converted, quite rapidly, to Christianity, which already had been the established faith both of Egypt and Axum for more than two centuries. In three Sudanese kingdoms: Nobatia, Makouria (whose capital was at Dongola), and Alwa, with its capital at Soba, close to the junction of the Blue and White Niles - both the rulers and the subjects became Christians between CE 542 and 580.

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The Christianiution of Nubia brought the country back, at least for the moment, into religious alignment with Egypt (the Nubians became affiliated with the Monophysite Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt), and it inaugurated an era of peace and stability that was to endure for almost seven centuries. Less than a century after the Christianization of Nubia came the Islamic conquest of Egypt, an event which was to have much more lasting political and economic repercussions for both the Egyptians and the Nubians. The Arab armies had no sooner completed the subjugation of Alexandria, in CE 642, than they turned their attentions against Nubia. They failed to conquer Nubia and instead concluded a treaty with the Nubian rulers that guaranteed Nubia against any further Arab incursions, in exchange for an annual payment of 360 slaves. The treaty, called in history, the Baqt, was to remain in force for six hundred years, and it provided the basis for both commercial and political relations between Nubia and Egypt throughout the Middle ages. Commerce in Lower Nubia (Nobatia) was largely in the hands of Arab merchants, who, under the terms of the Baqt were allowed to travel freely and even to settle in the country. In Makouria and Alwa, however, all foreign commerce was a royal monopoly, and no trader or cargo was allowed to pass upriver from the Second Cataract without express royal permission. In CE 1250 the warlike and predatory Mamluks replaced the Ayyubids as rulers of Egypt, and they inaugurated a period of military adventurism that was to last until the end of the Middle Ages. In the 15th century the kingdom of Makouria disintegrated.and ceased to exist. Its demise was due partly to internal weakness and dynastic feuds, partly to Mamluk incursions, but perhaps most of all to the wholesale migration of Arab nomad tribes into the Central Sudan

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at the end of the Middle Ages. The newcomers settled along the Middle Nile as well as in the grasslands east and west of it. In time, they intermarried with the native Nubian populations, and some of them adopted the Nubian languages. They did not, however, acknowledge the sovereignty of the·N ubian rulers, nor did they entbrace the Christian faith. It was under these circumstances, as well as the loss of contact between the Nubian and Egyptian churches, that Nubia was transformed from a Christian to a Muslim country between CE 1500 and 1700. Politically, the newcomers established a series of petty, warring principalities up and down the Nile, within the former territories of Makouria. Lower Nubia, devoid of pastoral resources, was unaffected by the Arab migrations. In the early 16th century, however, Lower Nubia was annexed by the newly established Ottoman rulers of Egypt. At the same time, in the Central Sudan, the last remnants of the kingdom of Alwa succumbed to an attack by the Funj Sultans of Sennar, another newly established Muslim state. In these rather chaotic circumstances, Nubian civilization came to an end. The Arahiution and Islamization of the Nile Valley was thus proceeding apace from Egypt, and African civiliution was being submerged and suppressed. The establishment of the Sennar kingdom in 1504 by Amara Dungas, who was a Nubian Christian who later became a Muslim, marked a major consolidation of Islamic power in the region. The northern part of the kingdom was dominated by nomadic Muslim Arabs and foreign trade was in the hands of local Muslim merchants. To the south of the kingdom of Sennar, different historical developments involving the }ii-Speaking peoples - the Ocholo, Jieng, Naath and Anywaa - were taking place. In their region, none of the developments associated with the northent Middle Nile (Nubia) were taking place. Merchant - based commerce touched only the periphery

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of the Ocholo and Jieng countries. Islamic religion and Arabic language would have no role to play until the nineteenth century. Instead, the old western Nilotic religion remained a powerful influence on the peoples' lives, and many of the old ways of Jii civilization continued. Nevertheless, the great encounter had started and it involved the struggle for the control of the Nile Valley between Arabs and Africans and a clash of two civilizations: Arab and African. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Arab merchants progressively penetrated the Middle Nile Basin and their activities changed the daily lives of the Nubians and the Beja. One negative consequence of this increase in commercial activities, was the enormous growth in the scale of the slave trade, supplying Egypt, and through Egypt, other parts of the Middle East. Many indigenous people in northern Sudan adopted the Arabic language and the label 'Arab', besides becoming Muslims. It is worth noting that in the Sudan, unlike other African countries with a Muslim population, Islam is closely associated with the Arabic language, culture, and race, perhaps because of the historical association with the Arab world and in particular with Egypt. North Africa experienced two processes: Islamization and Arabiz.ation. With time the North Africans came to see themselves as Arabs. This is what happened in Northern Sudan, under different circumstances. The indigenous people of Northern Sudan, though large in numbers, were gradually assimilated by their conversion to Islam and adoption of Arabic as the language of communication. The Sennar kingdom collapsed during the last quarter of the eighteenth century, succeeded by the Darfu.r State which was sharply stratified. The king and other members of the Keira group fomted the top layer of the system, followed by subordinate nobles. But the majority of the people were rural farmers and livestock keepers.

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The 18th century saw the establishment of a new political class of

estate-holders and slave - owners. Foreign merchants travelled to Darfur to participate in the expanding trans-Saharan trade. The same century saw the emergence of the Baggara Arabs, who were cattle nomads who spread widely across the plains between the Nuba Mountains and the Marra Mountains. During the lSth and 191h centuries, slaves had become the chief export from the region. It is reckoned that in the 19th century alone, Arab slavers carried off over 2,000,000 people as slaves from Southei:11 Sudan, the majority of them }ii-speakers.

The women's song explains that implicit in the endorsement of the armed struggle under the previous arrangements between the North and the South, which soutl\ertt revolutionaries perceive represented either a sellout by their leadership or a deceitful short-changing of the South by the North: "Regionalism we do not want any more Small government, we do not want any more What about the Sud~ to whom shall we leave it? We shall seize it, Even if it kills, it's our land."

Above all, the souther rt militants see themselves as the rightful heirs to the whole of Bilad al - Sudan, the "Land of the Blacks", as the Arabs use to call it. They sing: NNimeiri, return to your land The country is claimed by its owner

It is a war of national liberation It is Omdurman which we shall contest Even if it is difficult 'We will not succumb.............. .... .

It is Khartoum which we shall contest

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Even if it is difficult We will not succumb .... O' people, the land is our land."

Dr. Lam Akol (an Ocholo, an academic and an engineer), Dr. Riek Machar (a Naath, also former academic and engineer), Dr. John Garang ( a Jieng' and an agronomist) - these are the rightful heirs to the whole of Bilad - el - Sudan, not Southern Sudan. The traditional cultural value system and the way it has been reinforced and strengthened by modernizing forces have given the South a competing model of nationhood which is arguably more sustainable than the model offered by the fundame11talists in the North, who only advocate Arabization and Islamization. It is Southern nationalism, which is not fighting for the partition of Sudan but for a new united Sudan which is African and not Arab. The contribution of the Jii to this Southern natioMlism, both in terms of ideology and in quality leadership, has been immense. Different forms of knowledge have to be constructed in order for the Sudanese to function strategically. To the' Arabs' in the Sudan, the heart of Sudan is in the Middle East, and therefore they consider Sudan primarily as an Arab state. For the African, Sudan, as the Arabs themselves admitted a long time ago, is" the land of the blacks", and is an integral part of Africa. The challenge for African intellectuals, and for the Jii thinkers in particular, therefore is to destabilize and deconstruct hegemonic notions of "Middle East", "Islamic State" and "Union State" in order to define Sudan as an African project with its peculiar politics and identity. This should not pose any major obstacle since practically all Sudanese are Africans. As Deng has said, "virtually every Sudanese Arab can be assumed to have some genetic heritage from a slave origin." C'-5) It is a hybrid population. This means that

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virtually all ethnic groups in Sudan - North and South - have African roots and none can therefore claim any racial or cultural purity. To the Jii, therefore it is liberation of the whole of Sudan or death.

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Conclusion At the end of May, 2004, the last protocols between Sudanese Government and Sudan people's Liberation Movement/ Army were signed in the Kenya town of Naivasha. This marked the end of a twentyone year old war - the longest civil war in Africa - whch had wrought much misery and desolation. Conservative estimates put the cost of the conflict at more than two million dead and four million displaced. As the Sudanese Government committed acts of genocide and crimes against humanity, the international community remained indifferent and preferred not to get involved. In September 1999, for instance, the then US Secretary of State Madelein Albright confirmed this international indifference by saying that "... the human rights situation in Sudan is not marketable to the American people", a most callous statement coming from a person of Jewish origin who should know the meaning of holocaust. The international community invoked the principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of states. Even African governments opposed action arguing that it would constitute interference in a sovereign state's internal affairs. How much longer will the world allow nations intent on committing genocide to hide behind the United Nations Charter prescribing non-intervention in the internal affairs of states? And how much longer will the world place state sovereignity above human rights? And to what extent was the war in Sudan an "internal" matter warranting non-intervention?

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On Saturday, 5 June, 2004, the final phase of the Sudan peace process was launched at State House, Nairobi, between Sudan's First Vice - President Ali Osman Taha and Dr. John Garang, Sudan Peoples Liberation Movement Chairman, and witnessed by President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya. The first protocol signed in Machakos in 2002 exempted Southern Sudan from being governed by the Islamic sharia law. The other protocols signed deal with security, wealth and power sharing. Under the deal, Dr. Garang became First Vice - President in the larger Sudan's government headed by President Omar el - Bashir. The south and north will have separate armies, unlike in the 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement where rebel troops were absorbed by the national army. But there will also be a joint national army. Regarding the sharing of wealth, there will be a national petroleum commission to be co-chaired by the President and an SPLA representative. The sharing out of revenue from oil and non-oil products was agreed upon. The SPLM/ A and the Khartoum government also agreed on one currency and two Houses of Parliament.

In the contentious Nuba Mountains, the ruling congress will get 55 seats and SPLM/ A 45; and leadership will be rotational. Residents of Southern Blue Nile will be allowed to decide whether to deal with the SPLM/ Aor Khartoum. A referendum will be conducted in Abyei Mountains for the people to decide whether to remain in the north or go to southern Sudan.

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Sudan will have four levels of government - Local Government, State, Government of Southern Sudan and Central Government. After six years, Sudanese people will decide in a referendum whether to remain a untied nation or all the South to secede.

From Nairobi, Dr. Garang flew to Sudan to inform his people about the peace treaty. He underwent a special )ii ritual of welcoming home a prominent person, known as Tem (the shedding of blood). Several men tightly held down a white bull on its back, while an elderly man plunged a sharp spear into the bull's neck, before Garang jumped over the animal, followed by his wife Rebecca, to chants of traditional tunes. In his speeches at different Southern Sudanese towns - Yei, Panda!, Rumbek, - Garang said he had come home to bring peace, justice and

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equality for all Sudanese in a country that had been at war for 38 of its 48 years of independence. Saluting the "heroes and martyrs" who fell during the struggle, Dr. Garang said" "They did not die in vain. The fight has seen the birth of the New Sudan, which will ensure justice, democracy and human rights" The task is huge for those who want unity of the country. "The girl called Unity must be made attractive to be supported", Dr. Garang emphasized. However, Dr. Garang said the peace agreement was not the SPLM/ K s objective for launching an aggression against the Government in 1983. "We went to the bush to achieve New Sudan and the right of self - determination and until we achieve these, we have a lot to do. Peace is not also about papers we signed in Naivasha. It is what it means to individuals; what it brings to them." Garang explained that the Muslims were wrong in claiming that Sudan was their ancestral land and seeking to exclude other communities. "The Arabs only migrated there in the l'r' century. Kingdoms and kingdoms have disappeared in the now geographical Sudan." Seventy per cent of the people of Sudan are indigenous Africans, and Garang appealed to the Government to respect different religious and ethnic groups, "so that they can say this is our government."

Dr. Garang would like to make Sudan a model for Africa. It has the resources including oil and ideas to do that and occupies a strategic political situation in Africa. Will the Arabs this time honour the peace agreement? Only time will tell.

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REFERENCES (1)

Ehret, Christopher. 11te Civt1iZlltions ofAfrica: A History lo 1800. Oxford: James Currey, 2002, p . 126.

(2)

Steinhart, Edward. uThe Emergence of Bunyoro: the tributary mode of production and the formation of the state, 1400 - 1900" in Sfllfe Fomtlltion in Eastern Africa (Ed) A.J. Salim Nairobi: Heinemann, 1984, p. 78.

(3)

Ehret, C, 11te Civilization ofAfrica, pp. 391 - 393. Also see Schoenbrun, David Lee, A Green Pilla, A Gcod Pillce: A Social History ofthe GmJt Lakes Region, Earlier Times lo the 15"' Century. Portsmou~ NH: James Currey and Heinemann. 1998.

(4)

Adefuye, A.T. Political History of the Paluo 1400 - 1911. Ph.D. Thesis, Ibadan, 1973.

(5)

Steinhard, op.cit. p. 78 - 80.

(6)

Beattie, John. Bunyoro: An African Kingdom. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960. For very detailed discussion see, Anatomy ofll1I African Kingdom -A History ofBunyoro Kifllr11 by J.W. Nyakatura, Edited, with an introduction and notes by Godfrey N. Uzoigwe. New York: NOK Publishers Ltd. 1973.

(7)

Co~ David William: 11te Histonca/ Trtlllifion of Busogll'. Muhz11111 mtd Kintu. Oxford: Oarendon Press, 1972, p. 124.

(8)

Co~ David William: Womunafa Bunafa: A Study ofAuthority in 11 NineteenHt Century Afriam Community. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1971, p. 86.

(9)

Ogot, B.A. A History ofUte Soulhem Luo: Mignzfion tmd Settkmmt. Nairobi, East African Publishing House, 1967. pp. 75- 76.

(10)

Co~ David William: uLuo Camp in the seventeenth century Easter1, Uganda," a paper presented to the Third Inte1·1aational Congress of Africanists, Addis Ababa, 1973.

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(11)

Ogot, B.A. History ofIN Southern Luo, Volume I. Nairobi: F,ast African Pulishing House, 1967, p. 90.

(12)

Ibid, p . 73 - 74.

(13)

Cohen, David Wtliam, 11te Historical 1hlllilion ofBusog11, pp. 141 - 154.

(14)

Kiwanuka, M.S. "The Traditional History of the Buganda Kingdom" Ph.D. Thesis, London University, 1965.

(15)

Nyakatura, J. W., Anatomy ofan African Kingdom op. cit., p . 40.

(16)

Lwamgira, F.X., Amakur11 g11 Kiziha (2nd edition 1949), translated by E. I