THE POLITICAL SYSTEM OF THE NUER
Ivans Pritchard
Translated by Osama Elnur
The Nuer political system in South Sudan
Evans-Birchard
Translated by Osama Abdel-Rahman Elnur
Now that the years of rescue have proven the futility of the “revolutionary political-Islamist” practice, which developed a plan of action for large-scale social engineering that led to the establishment of an authoritarian theocratic rule that is the second of its kind in Sudan. The rescue attempt to reshape Sudanese society represented a huge project that caused great inconvenience to many Sudanese political thinkers, which prompted the utopian political rescuers and Islamists to turn a deaf ear over the years to many complaints, and to severely suppress every opposing opinion, unreasonable or reasonable, adhering to the words of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, “You cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs.”
After they exerted their utmost energy to break all the eggs, the fact was revealed to them that no matter how many eggs they broke, the chickens lay eggs with high fertility. They realized the failure of their unilateral utopian project and started talking about ethnic, cultural and religious “diversity” and “pluralism”, and they allowed their media outlets to move away from the “arena of redemption” with a single media approach by broadcasting programs that are meaningful, meaning the ones that are most fertile for the project of the Sudanese nation. But at the same time, they seek to empty the slogans of diversity and pluralism by turning them into slogans governed by what they call “rescue constants,” and therefore it is permissible to say that their adoption of the principle of “diversity and pluralism” seems to be nothing more than a short-term political tactic.
Diversity, ethnic, cultural and religious pluralism has been embodied by the Sudanese left since its emergence on the Sudanese scene at the end of the 1940s and developed to crystallize in the saying “unity in diversity”. Since its appearance on the scene of Sudanese political life, the Islamist movement has refused to acknowledge the reality of diversity and pluralism by calling for the imposition of the hegemony of a “central culture” that denies the other. But whether it wants to be saved or not, the course of history must lead to the supremacy of the values of rationality and the victory of the “human spirit” that establishes the individual not by his religion, color, ethnic affiliation, or cultural identity, but by his contribution to making Sudan a sufficient society, providing all its citizens with the necessary calories, ensuring the continuity of acculturation among all its races as one nation, to enrich human heritage.
After the utopian political-Islamic project led to the tragedies that the Sudanese nation is experiencing as a result of a civil war that represents the crystallization of the entire project, and from extreme poverty besetting the citizen, and from the complete loss of national sovereignty over part of Sudan through an official agreement with Uganda, and from an undeclared recognition of the separation of Halayeb from the body of Sudan, and from the lack of security stability in the Far West, and from...and...don’t the advocates of Sudanese believers have the right to “unity in Diversity” singing the return to Khartoum “Markaz” with Mahjoub Sharif:
He sang, Khartoum, and he sang
Pull the singer's strings
Light from the forehead of your martyr
Have a good evening and rest assured
And we, dear lady
Of your fruits
In the paths of the night, your day
Before you wait too long
We are jenna
And they said we are tempted
They told people we are done
We came as we were, your embrace contained us
Advocates of Sudanism in Sudan as a whole have always started from the concept of “acculturation,” completely rejecting the theses of the political Islamist movement and other deconstructive movements in the north who call for imposing the dominance of a single element out of the totality of the elements of the cultural and religious complex that makes up the Sudanese nation. At the same time, Sudanese advocates continued to reject the separatist movement in the south. Since the concept of “acculturation” completely excludes the principle of a dominant majority versus minorities, as long as the adoption of such a principle necessarily leads to the disintegration of Sudan and obstructs the construction of the project of the one Sudanese nation, it is necessary to crystallize the phenomena that arose and arise from the direct and continuous friction between the elements of the complex whole of Sudanese cultures and the groups that bear those cultures. Hence the effort in translating this research, which Evans Pritchard wrote in the year... about the political system of the Nuer, falls within the category of effort exerted by many writers, artists, thinkers and politicians seeking to crystallize and frame the concept of "acculturation" as a tool for working to defeat the utopian political-Islamic project and to present an alternative project that calls for the openness of all Sudanese cultures without closure and without intellectual blockage in the circle of the so-called "central culture." We must understand each other and we must all delve into the depths of each other’s mentality by knowing and understanding the other’s cultural components instead of withdrawing into the dungeon of the closed chauvinistic view that imagines making a particular element of the diverse Sudanese cultural complex the center of the universe that the other, the marginal, must know and understand!!
I write briefly about the Nuer because I have already recorded a significant portion of my observations about their political constitution, and all of that is about to be published in a book. These observations, however, are included in this volume (African Political Systems) because the Nuer constitution provides a model for East Africa and because it tells us about a very particular political type.
To reveal their lack of government we must first take a brief look at the ecology of the people: their means of earning a living, their distribution, and their relationship to their surroundings. The Nuer practice cattle rearing and agriculture. They also fish, hunt animals, and collect wild fruits and roots. However, cows, unlike their other food sources, have more than just nutritional importance; they are undoubtedly of higher value in their eyes than anything else. Hence, although they have a mixed economy, emotionally the Nuer are essentially pastoralists.
Nuer land is more suitable for livestock rearing than for agriculture: it is flat, clayey, savanna, dry and barren during the dry season and flooded and covered with tall grass during the rainy season. Heavy rains fall and rivers overflow their banks from June until December. From December to June, rain becomes scarce and river levels decrease. The year thus consists of two seasons of equal length. This seasonal dualism, along with pastoral concerns, far influences political relations.
During the rainy season, the Nuer live in high-altitude villages on the backs of small rounded plateaus and hills or dotted on stretches of land that are not very steep, and they are busy cultivating millet and corn. The land that intersects between one village and another is submerged for six months, and is therefore not suitable for residence, agriculture, or grazing. Any distance from five to twenty miles may separate neighboring villages, while greater distances separate sections of a single tribe and separate tribe from tribe.
At the end of the rainy season, people burn grass to provide new pasture and leave their villages to stay in small camps. When drought becomes severe, the dwellings of these intermediate camps are concentrated around permanent water sources. Although these movements are carried out mainly for the sake of cows, they also enable the Nuer to catch fish, which is almost impossible from village sites, and, although to a lesser extent, to hunt animals and collect wild fruits and roots. When the rains fall again, they return to their villages, where there is protection for the cows and the high ground allows for farming.
The distribution of the Nuer is determined by natural conditions and the lifestyle whose general outlines we have set. During the rainy season the villages are separated, but by no means isolated, from their neighbors by submerged stretches of grass, and the local communities thus form very different units. During the dry season, people from different villages in the same area concentrate around permanent water sources and share common camps. On the other hand, families from one village may go to one camp and families to another camp, although the majority form a local group throughout the year.
The Nuer rarely have surplus food at the beginning of the rainy season and it is usually insufficient to meet their needs. Of course, it can be said that they are usually on the verge of destitution and that they occasionally face severe starvation after only a few years. In these circumstances, it is understandable that there is a high degree of sharing of food in the same village, especially among members of neighboring dwellings and villages. Although at any given time some members may have more cows and crops than others, and these are their own property, people eat in each other's dwellings at ceremonies and at daily meals, and the food is more or less divided, to the point where one can speak of a common stock. Food is plentiful from the end of September until mid-December in a normal year, and during those months celebrations, dances, etc. are held.
The Nuer have an uncomplicated technique. Their country lacks iron and stone, and the number and variety of trees is limited, and they are not suitable for purposes other than buildings. This scarcity of raw materials, together with the limited supply of food, strengthens social ties, and brings the people of the village or camp closer together, in a moral sense, since as a result they are highly interdependent and herding, hunting, fishing, and to a lesser extent agricultural activities, are necessarily collective work. This is most clearly evident in the dry season, when the cows of several families graze while tied up in a common corral and a single herd is led to the pasture land.
Therefore, in a narrow sense, the household represents the economic unit, and the larger local groups form, directly or indirectly, cooperative groups integrated to maintain existence, and partnerships that own natural resources and participate in their exploitation. Cooperative functions are more direct and prominent in small local groups than in larger groups, but the collective function of obtaining the necessary needs of life from the same sources is to some degree common to all local groups from the household to the tribe.
These local groups consist of the monogamous family associated with a single hut, the family occupying a single dwelling, the hamlet, the village, the camp, the district, the tribal divisions of various sizes, the tribe, the people, and the international community that represent the limits of the social horizon of the Nuer. The family, the household, and the hamlet are domestic rather than political groups, and we do not discuss them in more detail.
The distribution of these local communities is largely determined by natural conditions, especially by the presence of land that remains higher than the flood level during the rainy season, and by permanent water that resists drought. In each village, the number of residents and the arrangement of housing are determined by the nature of the site. When the dwellings rise upon a solitary hill they are crowded together; When they are lined up along the top of a mountain or hill, they are farther apart from each other; When spread out over a wide stretch of high ground, one hamlet can be separated from another by several hundred yards. In many large villages, dwellings are clustered in clusters, or hamlets, whose inhabitants are usually close relatives and their wives. It is only possible to give an approximate indication of the population of a village, but it can be said that it ranges from 50 to several hundred people.
As we have shown, the villages are separated from each other by several miles of savannah. A group of villages located in an area that allows direct communications to emerge, which we call a “district.” This is not a political group, for it can only be defined in relation to each village, since the same villages can be included in more than one district; We do not consider a local group a political group unless the people speak of themselves as a group in the face of other groups of the same type and are considered such by others. However, the region tends to correspond to a third-class branch of a tribe, and it is the network of social connections that gives the branch much of its cohesion. People from the same area usually share camps in the dry season and attend marriage ceremonies and other events between them. They intermarry and then establish affinity and lineage relationships that revolve around a patrilineal nucleus, as we will see later.
Villages, the political units of Nuerland, are grouped into tribal divisions or branches. There are some very small tribes to the west of the Nile that form only adjacent villages. In the larger tribes to the west of the Nile and in all the tribes east of the Nile, we find that the tribal territory is divided into a number of regions separated by uninhabited lands, which also intersect between the nearest residence sites of neighboring tribes.
Since all the Nuer leave their villages to camp near the water, they have a second distribution in the dry season. When they camp on the banks of a river, these camps in some cases follow one another after every few miles, but when they camp around inland basins, a distance of twenty to thirty miles separates one camp from the next. The territorial principle of the Nuer political structure is modified by seasonal migrations. People who form separate village groups in the rainy season may unite in a common camp during the dry season. Likewise, people who are from the same village can join different camps. Also, in larger tribes it is usually necessary for the members of a village to cross large country areas, inhabited by other village groups, to reach water, and their camp may be located close to other villages. To avoid total loss of their herds to rinderpest or other disaster, the Nuer distribute the herds into multiple camps.
In western Nuer country, where the tribes are generally smaller than those east of the Nile, there is always plenty of water and pasture, and it is therefore possible for village communities in the rainy season to maintain relative isolation in the dry season. But where, as, for example, in the Luo tribe, scarcity of water and pasture dictates more active movement and greater concentration, people distributed over wider areas can establish greater social contact with each other than in western Nuer land. The isolation and independence of local groups is broken by economic necessity, which consequently leads to an increase in the size of the political group. This fact must be considered in relation to another fact, which is that to the east of the Nile, wide stretches of flat land allow greater local concentration of rain than on the western bank of the Nile. In addition to seasonal concentration, it provides an explanation, although not completely complete, for the location of tribal boundaries, since it is determined not only by the distribution of villages, but also by the direction in which people move as they move to dry season pastures. Therefore, the tribes of the Zaraf Valley retreat to the Zaraf River and therefore do not share their camps with the Luo tribe, and that part of the Luo tribe that travels to the east and north-east establishes their camps on the Nyanding River and in the upper Pibor and does not share their waters and pastures with the Jikani tribes, who travel to the upper Sobat River and below the Pibor. Moreover, some of the major Nuer tribes are able to maintain a degree of tribal unity without government agencies, which may be due to seasonal migration, since, as we mentioned earlier, the various local sections are forced by the harshness of the region to enter into mutual contact, to develop some behaviors of patience, and to recognize common interests.
Likewise, a branch of the tribe is a distinct clan, not only in that its villages occupy a well-defined portion of the tribal territory, but also in that it possesses its own unique pastures in the dry season. People from one branch move in one direction and people from a neighboring branch move in the opposite direction. Dry season concentrations are never on tribal lines, but rather by branches of the tribe, and the population density is not high in any region or any stage.
The total Nuer population is about 300,000 people. I do not know the total area in miles of their country, but to the east of the Nile, where there are approximately 180,000 Nuer, they are said to inhabit 26,000 square miles, with a low population density of seven per square mile. Population density is not better west of the Nile. Nowhere in Nuer country is there a high degree of local concentration.
Although the movement of the dry season produces more mutual relations between the members of the different tribal branches than is observed in the rainy season, the distribution may lead us to expect that these relations are essentially individual or, when they relate to groups, that they are within the framework of small local groups, and not the larger tribal branches, reaching a state of interdependence. This could potentially be one of the reasons leading to the lack of structural complexity and the great diversity of forms of social relations among the Nuer. Outside of small kinship groups, village groups and camps, there are no vehicles for economic cooperation and no organized ritual associations. Except for seasonal military adventures, active communal life is confined to small tribal clans.
What is the Nuer tribe? The most clearly visible feature is the unity and closedness of its region, and this is more clearly observed in the pre-colonial period than it is today. The population of the tribe varies from a few hundred among some small tribes to the west of the Nile - if these are actually considered tribes, as very little research has been conducted in that area - to several thousand. Most tribes have a population of over 5,000 with larger numbers between 30,000 and 45,000. Each tribe is economically self-sufficient, with its own pastures, water supplies, and fishing ponds, which only its members may have the right to exploit. The tribe has its name, which symbolizes its uniqueness. Tribe members have a sense of patriotism: they are proud of their membership in the tribe and consider it superior to other tribes. Within each tribe there is a dominant clan that provides a kinship framework upon which the political complex is based. Each tribe also independently organizes its own age ranking system.
The tribe does not differ from its divisions in any of these mentioned characteristics. The uncomplicated definition says that the tribe is the largest group that must resolve disputes between its members through arbitration and that it must unite against other groups of the same kind and against foreigners. In the last two cases, there is no political group larger than the tribe, and all the smaller political groups are sections of it.
There is a law within the tribe; There is a conflict resolution mechanism and a moral obligation to contain it sooner or later. If a person kills a fellow tribesman, the grudge can be prevented or blocked by paying cows. Between tribe and tribe, there are no means to bring the parties to the conflict together, and compensation is neither offered nor required. Therefore, if a member of one tribe kills a member of another tribe, punishment can only take the form of tribal war. We should not assume that feuds within the tribe can be resolved easily. There is considerable control over rebellions within the village, but the larger the size of the local group, the more difficult settlement becomes. When two large sections of a tribe enter into enmity, the chances of immediate arbitration and settlement are remote. The force of the law varies with the distance in the tribal structure that separates the people concerned. However, as long as the sense of community remains and the legal custom is officially recognized within the tribe, regardless of the fluctuations and contradictions that may arise in the actual relations between the members of the tribe, they continue to consider themselves a united group. Then either the hostilities are felt and settled, thus preserving the unity of the tribe, or the hostilities remain unresolved so that people lose hope and aspiration for a settlement and finally stop feeling that they have to settle them, so that the tribe descends into disunity and two new tribes emerge.
Likewise, we must not assume that the political boundaries of the tribe are the boundaries of the social relationship. People move freely throughout Nuer land and are not harassed if they have not committed a bloody crime. They marry and, to a lesser extent, trade across tribal boundaries, and visit relatives residing outside their own tribe. Many social relations, which are not specifically political, bind members of different tribes. One has only to mention that the same clans are found in different tribes and that everywhere the age groups are coordinated. Every Nuerian has the right to leave his tribe and settle in a new tribe, of which he then becomes a member. In times of peace, even Dinka strangers have the right to visit Nuer land without being harmed. In addition, we must realize that the entire Nuer people represent one group, not divided regionally, within the framework of a common culture and a sense of privacy and distinction. Their common language and values allow communication between them. Of course, we may talk about the Nuer as a nation, but only in cultural content, since there is no common political organization and no central administration.
Besides being the largest group in which legal obligations are recognized, the tribe is also the largest group that usually unites in case of attack or defense. The young men of the tribe have, until recently, carried out mass raids against the Dinka and waged war against other Nuer tribes. Invasions against the Dinka were frequent; While wars between the Nuer tribes were less frequent. In theory, if two sections of two different tribes are in a state of hostility, each section can depend on the support of other sections of the same tribe, but in practice the other sections do not participate. Neighboring tribes unite in cases against foreigners, especially against the Dinka, although there is no moral obligation to do so. The union is short-lived, and the allies carry out their tasks independently, even in the case of cooperation.
At present, the Nuer to the west and south border the Dinka, who seem to have the same type of political system of their own, that is, to form tribal groups without a central government. Since ancient times, the Nuer have been at war with the Dinka, and they have always been the attackers. We know that in the first half of the last century (the nineteenth century - Osama), waves of Nuer flowed from their homeland to the west bank of the Nile, sweeping into the Dinka land to the east of that river, and that they occupied and absorbed the population in most of what is now Eastern Nuer Land (the Nuer distinguished between Nath Sieng, “the motherland,” or Western Nuer land, and Nath Dwar, “diaspora,” or Eastern Nuer land). The war between the two peoples has continued to this day, but it does not seem that there has been a major change in the region during the past fifty years, if we trust the maps of early travelers. If we are to know why the eastern tribes form groups larger in number and area compared to the western tribes, then migrations towards the east represent a fact that must be taken into account along with those migrations documented in earlier times. This is because it is permissible to assume that the struggle for occupation and stability, and the unprecedented absorption of the Dinka, had an impact on the migrating crowds.
To the north, the Nuer come into varying degrees of contact with the Arabs, with the tribes of the Nuba Mountains, with the powerful Shilluk kingdom, and with some small groups in Dar Funj (the Burun and the Kuma); While the Nuer border on the east and southeast with the Gala in Ethiopia, the Anuak, and the Bier. Whenever the Nuer entered into relations with these peoples, they were hostile in nature.
The slave-grabbing Arabs of northern Sudan intruded here and there into the accessible parts of Nuer land in the second half of the nineteenth century, but they did not succeed anywhere in gaining the upper hand or, of course, in leaving a noticeable influence on the Nuer, who strongly opposed them and later resisted the Egyptian government, which did not undertake serious operations against them. Likewise, the Nuer treated British rule with disrespect until their opposition was broken and they were subjected under strict administration through long military operations between 1928 and 1930. With the exception of this episode in their history, it can be said that the Nuer have reached a state of balance in their foreign relations and a state of mutual hostility that is expressed from time to time in war.
The tribe is divided into regional segments that consider themselves separate groups. We refer to the primary, secondary, and tertiary divisions of the tribe as segments. Primary partitions are segments of a tribe, secondary partitions are segments of a primary partition, and tertiary partitions are segments of a secondary partition. The third is divided into villages, and the villages are divided into household groups. A member of a third section, Z², from tribe B, considers himself a member of group Z² in relation to Z¹, but he considers himself a member of Y², not Z², in relation to Y¹. Likewise, he considers himself a member of Y, not Y², with respect to Therefore, an individual is considered a member of a political group in one case and not a member of it in a different case. For example, he is a member of a tribe in relation to other tribes, but he is not a member of it in that his tribe segment stands in opposition to other segments. When studying the political constitution of the Nuer, it is therefore necessary to look at it together with the constitutions of their enemies as a single political system, since the clear structural characteristic of the Nuer political groups lies in their relativity. A tribal segment is a political group in relation to other segments of the same kind, all of whom jointly constitute a tribe only in relation to the other Nuer tribes and to the foreign neighboring tribes that form a part of their polity, and without these relations little meaning can be attached to the concepts of “tribe” and “tribal segment. The distinction and uniqueness of a political group in relation to groups of the same kind is a generalization that extends to all local Nuer groups, from the largest to the smallest.
The relationship between tribes and between segments of a tribe, which gives it political unity and distinction, is a relationship of opposition. The antagonism between the tribes, or federations of tribes, and foreign peoples, is expressed on the part of the Nuer by deliberate and constant raids, made recklessly and violently. Among the Nuer tribes, this opposition is represented by actual wars or by acceptance of the fact that the conflict cannot, or must not, be resolved by any other means. In tribal strife, however, women remain outside the scope of killing and slavery. Between segments of the same tribe, antagonism is expressed through the institution of grudges. Fighting between individuals from the same village or camp is largely limited to clashes with clubs. The hostility and pattern of expression in these different relationships varies in degree and in the form it takes.
Grudges usually erupt between sections of the same tribe and are usually long-term. It is more difficult to settle the larger the sections involved. Within the context of the village, settlement is facilitated, and within the framework of the tripartite divisions, grudges can be settled, sooner or later, but when grudges involve larger groups, they may not be settled at all, especially if members of either side are killed in a major battle.
The tribal section has most of the characteristics of a tribe: name, national feeling, dominant lineage, regional distinctiveness, economic resources and so on. Each section is a mini-tribe, and sections differ from tribes only in terms of size, in terms of the degree of integration, and in that they unite in the event of war and adopt common principles of justice.
The strength of feeling associated with local groups is schematically proportional to their size. The feeling of unity within the tribe is weaker than the feeling of unity within its sections. The smaller the local group, the stronger the connections between its members, and the more solidary and necessary these connections become for the survival of the group. In a large group, such as a tribe, connections are rare, short-lived, and limited. Also, the smaller the size of the group, the more interconnected and diverse the relationships are between its members, as residence relationships are a thread in a network of paternal lineage, maternal lineage, and in-law lineage. Relations by blood and marriage become fewer as the group expands.
It is clear that when we talk about the Nuer tribe, we use a relative term, because it is not always easy to say, according to the criterion we use, whether we are dealing with a tribe with two primary segments or with two tribes. The tribal system, as it is known in sociological analysis, can, therefore, be approached by any uncomplicated graphical proposition. The tribe is a representation of a distinct segmental tendency of the political structure as a whole. The reason we speak of Nuer political groups, and of the tribe in particular, as relative groups and note that they are not easily described in terms of political morphology, is that political relations are of a dynamic nature. It is in a constant state of change in one direction or another. Clear movement towards cleavage. The tendency of tribes and tribal segments towards disintegration and internal conflict between their parts is balanced by the tendency towards fusion, unification and integration of groups. This tendency to assimilate is inherited in the segmentary nature of the Nuer political structure, for although each group tends to divide into antagonistic parts, those parts tend to fuse in relation to the other groups. Therefore, assimilation and integration are two elements of the same principle of segmentation, and the Nuer tribe and its sections must be understood as a relationship between these two opposites, yet two complementary tendencies. The natural environment, lifestyle, distribution pattern, poor communications, uncomplicated economy, etc., explain to some extent the reality of political division, but the tendency towards segmental division seems to be inherited in the political structure itself.