An Introduction to Apuk Giir’s Legend: Apuk’s War and Peace Legend – Part 1

Construction of our Identity: Apuk’s War and Peace Legend

By Thiik Mou Giir, Melbourne, Australia

Friday, July 30, 2020 (PW) — The legend I am going to write about is from Apuk Giir, Gogrial East.  Apuk consists of nine sections: Abioor, Abuok, Adoor, Amuk, Apool, Biong, Boiyar, Jurmananger, and Nyaramong.  During the time of crisis, these sections divide themselves into two groups.  

One group is known by the name Lual and the other by the name Amakiir.  In peacetime, people scarcely hear and say these names.  It is only when there are internal crises that could cause war to break out between these two groups that is when people start mentioning them.

A union in marriage between a Lual and an Amakiir produced me.  My father, Mou Giir Thiik, was a Lual, and my mother, Alwel Ashet Yeer, was an Amakiir.  Whenever a fight breaks out between Lual and Amakiir and, as a result, a number of people from both sides get killed, for us, the family of Mou Giir, the pain and sadness become unbearable because we are related to the people on both sides.  The last time Apuk’s two groups fought each other was in 1970s.

A few years after that war, my father, Mou Giir, was urged by the elders of Apuk to go and take up Apuk’s leadership from his younger brother, Thiik Awou Giir.  With his lengthy administrative in the Sudanese government behind him, Mou Giir went to Apuk where he fully committed himself to bringing a long, lasting peace.  

He went around visiting and spending time with each of all Apuk’s sub-chiefs.  They all made a solemn pledge that there would never be a war between Lual and Amakiiragain and, indeed, there had been no war between them ever since.

Despite of the fact that Beny-dit Mou Giir, sub-chiefs and many chiefs that ruled Apuk over hundreds and hundreds of years played a pivotal role in maintaining peace in Apuk, yet the role Apuk’s War and Peace Legend have been playing in maintaining the same peace cannot be underestimated.  

At least once a year, when most adults attend events to celebrate the end of the years or to perform rituals and ceremonies for the repose of the soul of a chief, for example, the people of Apuk come together and are reminded again and again about this legend by means of spiritual leaders’ invocations of Nhialic (God) and through songs sung by all attendees.

This Apuk’s War and Peace Legend will be the focus of the next article.  If this legend can somehow inspire some or all South Sudanese, it would have served the purpose as to why I am sharing it with you.  To make my intention clear in the light that the next six articles will shed, Apuk people use the legend when they go to war as a way of confronting a foreign aggression.  

On the other hand, they use the legend to fulfil their spiritual and peaceful needs.  The question is: Apuk’s Legend have been playing that dual role for the people of Apuk, how can we adapt it to play the same dual role for all the people of South Sudan?

To South Sudanese Artists, Educationists and the Public

Legends, great legends, should be considered as national body of treasures and not just possessions of members or members of sections of tribes they belong to.  There are so many South Sudanese who are literate, university graduates and writers.  The challenge for them is that they write these legends down in books.

Oral tradition has played its role to its fullest.  Story-tellers and singers were at the forefront in the efforts of transmitting legends and stories from one generation to the next generation.  Through those legends our people have been absorbing philosophical and cultural ideas of the past.  In that way, these legends have contributed in the formation of our collective and diverse character, as South Sudanese.

It must be noted, though, that these legends have never been widely shared; that is, they have scarcely been passed on from members of one tribe to the members of other tribes.  The reason why this has been so is because these legends are told and sung in the local and tribal languages.  This have resulted in limiting the scope of their influence.

This is the time that this must change, or they will fade away in our memory.  Oral tradition must give way to written tradition.  The memory of people who write is not as good as the memory of those who had never been in schools, who have never learned to read and write.  There is no reason for us to continue depending solely on storytellers and countryside singers as we have people who can write, and write very well.  Just as we have writers, we also have readers, who are able to write and read in our own languages as well as in foreign languages; Arabic, English, et cetera, et cetera.  We have no excuse for not taking up our pens and writing these legends down.

Not only that, these legends can be written and after they are written down, can be translated into other South Sudanese languages.  When books become available and are within the reach of all South Sudanese at home and in the Diaspora, they will then be taught and studied in schools.  They can also be studied in South Sudanese universities.

Or, are we of the mind that we cannot take such an undertaking because the legends and stories of our people are only for un-educated and for the so-called village people?  If this is how we think, then we are doing ourselves disservice.  The Western world would not have the Hollywood production of Shrek and the Arabs and Islamic world would not have Ali Baba, had the stories have not been inherited by people of particular cultures.  The legends and stories we write today will be the materials that our film producers will need tomorrow.  Who knows, the legends we write today could become our contribution to the global culture tomorrow.

If you are a writer or a singer and you know one or two great legends from a tribe you descended from, please make it known by any means possible.  Your contribution will make our efforts to Construct Our New Identity (CONI) a reality.  The real and lasting freedom of all of us is yet to come through efforts such as these.

Thiik Mou Giir, Bachelor Degree in Education from the University of Alexandria, Egypt; Post Graduate Diploma, from Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He can be reached via his email contact: thiik_giir@hotmail.com

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