SOUTH SUDAN CULTURE AND TRIBALISM (An Australian Viewpoint)
6 min readBy Penny Gamlin
Along with recovering from the shocking recent crisis and finding new leaders who will put their personal interests behind those they are elected to govern, the people of South Sudan would be wise to discuss and debate the value of some of their most significant cultural indicators if they are to face the future with any confidence.
Whereas an individual in any society sees himself as, according to age, inclination and circumstance, a member of a family and an ethnic, religious or national group, a balance should be achieved, and behaviour managed, so that a person might live in a way which is to the public and private good.
However, certain customs in South Sudan are not conducive to either, even though in the past, before the rise of the nation-state, before foreign incursions and before guns and money, they were doubtless important in maintaining the survival and coherence of the group. Most South Sudanese wish to see south Sudan develop into a modern state with Western-style services and human rights standards, but some customs are inconsistent with this vision because the outcomes they produce render them, in the modern world, redundant and destructive, especially when they exist alongside each other.
The three main customs which I believe now threaten the people they once helped survive are tribalism, polygamy and the bride price. All three need to be modified or abandoned altogether if South Sudan is to not disintegrate and find itself once more prey to exploitation which it put a stop to at such immense cost.
Pessimism about South Sudan’s survival was voiced far and wide right from its separation from Sudan, if not before, because of the tribal nature of the South Sudanese. The trouble came even sooner than expected.
Tribal differences in South Sudan are fascinating to the observer, and South Sudanese seem to be quite frank when talking about intellectual, psychological or other characteristics of the different tribes. Tribal identification is extraordinarily intense, especially in peripheral areas where vague expectations that a national government will provide services are unmet, and the people survive any way they can. But the long war has exacerbated tribal divisions, largely courtesy of Khartoum, machinations of which have bred distrust – and provided guns. Tribal violence can be very easily sparked, and there exist bitter episodes from the past which remain fresh in the minds of many; the president knew this well when he mentioned “1991” in an inflammatory speech recently.
Polygamy persists in South Sudan, and is peculiarly at odds with otherwise strong efforts to see women as full and equal members of South Sudanese society, including the workplace and the political arena. Apart from being demeaning to women of such marriages and to the children, whose upbringing tends to be left to their often neglected mothers, polygamy is an inherently destabilising custom. In Islamic Sudan, it leads to early marriage of girls and a history of men preying on southern and immigrant non-Muslim women, as well as a pool of unmarried and unhappy young men, while South Sudan’s history of polygamy is connected to the raiding of other tribes’ women and of cattle, which make up the bride price.
The bride price, the exchanged head of cattle which for centuries was the basis of the economy, has been affected by emigration of South Sudanese: the funds available to them can diverge markedly from those available to South Sudanese in their own country. The oil-and-corruption economy existing at the present cannot be expected to lend any fairness to an already unbalanced situation. Raiding of cattle continues, now with guns and sometimes irrational slaughter of cattle camp dwellers.
Countries in which these cultural factors do not exist are being asked to give seemingly unending help to South Sudan. The Australian Government has committed over $50m this year alone to South Sudan. This effectively means that Australian taxpayers, who limit themselves to one spouse, do not see women as chattel to be paid for, and who do not engage in tribal fighting because their ethnic identity is subsumed to their national identity, are being required to financially support problems arising from practices they find abhorrent.
The South Sudanese have much to teach Australians about courage and persistence, having fought a long war against jihad and the imposition of sharia law. Would Australians fight so hard if sharia law were to be imposed here? The South Sudanese here can also educate Australians about techniques used to slowly impose sharia law on an unsuspecting population until there is no going back apart from war. They can also educate us on the unpleasantness of living under Islamic law as non-Muslims, something about which most Australians are exceedingly and dangerously ignorant.
But now the people living in South Sudan, having fought so hard and suffered so much to achieve separation from their oppressors, must consider their priorities. Some will be willing to change – tribal scarification is already being discontinued by many, for example – and some will not. Some will demand a return to cultural practices which were lost over hundreds of years of interference from other cultures. Others might prefer to abandon some practices while reintroducing others: bringing back the use of cutlery would be one I would favour!
Such arguments are for the South Sudanese to engage in as they struggle to formulate political and cultural systems which will work for them. Good leadership and good governance are vitally important, but the nation will remain fragile and vulnerable to debilitating and heartbreaking eruptions of violence if cultural adaptations are not made to the reality of nationhood, which the people have chosen.
My own preference would be that polygamy be banned, including, importantly, for the Muslims living in South Sudan, to deter any men from converting to Islam for the reason of legal polygamy. The bride price could be limited to a token amount only, as a mark of respect and not an indicator of a woman’s “value” or a man’s wealth. Tribalism could be diluted by means of civics education at all schools, and by other measures which creative and patriotic South Sudanese minds could devise which could perhaps be codified into law.
I have heard it said more than once that South Sudanese will never, never give up polygamy. Then let them take a vote on it: polygamy along with instability and violence, or monogamy as stipulated by Christianity, to which most South Sudanese claim adherence? Then there is bride price and the risk of raiding massacres, or acceptance of modern economic and gender-equality norms? Tribal pride or national pride? Let there be both, but in all due proportion.
For South Sudan, it is time to leave suffering and humiliation, both imposed by others and self-imposed, behind. The South Sudanese have much to be proud of, but that famous pride needs to be subjected to some serious self-reflection.
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