From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Thu May 06 2010 - 13:29:18 EDT
http://www.economist.com/world/middle-east/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16068960
South Sudan's biggest ethnic group
On your tractor, if you can The Dinka will decide whether Africa’s latest
state-in-waiting fails or prospers
May 6th 2010 | BOR | From *The Economist* print edition
THE Anglican Bishop of Bor, Nathaniel Garang, sits under the little shade
afforded by a thorn tree. His dusty compound has a few mud and straw huts,
some plastic chairs, and goats reaching up to bare branches on their hind
legs. The bishop is around 70, he guesses, and in reflective mood. He wears
a small brass cross given to him by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Entering
Canterbury cathedral, he remarks, was a special moment in his life.
Mr Garang is a Dinka, the largest of south Sudan’s tribes. Specifically, he
is a Bor Dinka (see map), the first of the Dinka groups to become Christian
and be educated. Their historic missionary post, founded just upriver on the
Nile in 1905, was burnt down during Sudan’s long civil war between the Arab
and Muslim north and the Christian and animist south that ended only five
years ago. The cathedral in Bor was also shot up, but still attracts several
thousand worshippers.
Mr Garang attributes miracles in the war to the Dinka’s strong Christian
faith. “We Dinka know the blood of animal sacrifice is very powerful, so the
blood of Christ is easy for us to understand.” Will there be another war? Mr
Garang shakes his head firmly. “This is a time of work, peace and
resettlement.”
In elections last month Omar al-Bashir, a northern Arab, easily retained the
presidency of Sudan as a whole, especially since the main northern
opposition boycotted the proceedings, while in the south the Sudan People’s
Liberation Movement (SPLM), the former rebels’ political wing, won hands
down. The southerners now eagerly await a promised referendum on
independence early next year. They are very likely to vote for secession. If
allowed to, they will then create Africa’s first newly independent country
since Eritrea in 1993.
In any event, the new state of South Sudan, whose official name has yet to
be finally determined, will be dominated by the Dinka. Their politicians,
their spending priorities, even their culture seem set to prevail. At least
a quarter of south Sudan’s 9m people are Dinka. For two decades the southern
rebels’ leader was a Dinka, John Garang, a kinsman of the bishop. After his
death in a helicopter crash in 2005, he was succeeded by another Dinka,
Salva Kiir, who launched his recent election campaign from John Garang’s
mausoleum. Like the Kikuyu in Kenya, the Dinka are often accused by the
region’s other 40-plus tribes of tailoring South Sudan’s foundation story to
suit their own ends.
Bred to love their cattle
The land of the Bor Dinka is vast and fertile but flat. When it rains, water
stands in stagnant pools for months. People are stranded in the marshes from
May to October with little communication to the outside world. The sorghum
harvest depends on good rains. This year they have been late, so the harvest
will be poor. Arable farming is unreliable and the Dinka are in any case
devoted to cattle, which they still value even above schools and clean
water. Children are named after the colour of cows. Marriages are negotiated
in cows. Status in rural areas is determined by the number of cows you own.
“The dream of a Dinka-dominated country would be everyone running naked in
cattle camps,” says a seasoned observer in Juba, the would-be country’s
fledgling capital.
But other southern tribes are equally devoted to their cattle. The Bor Dinka
often fight the Nuer, the region’s second tribe, and particularly fear the
Murle, a smaller pastoral lot who think nothing of raiding Dinka cattle
byres close to Bor. The Dinka often disparage the Nuer as hotter-tempered
and the Murle as mad. Dinka elders and some outsiders say the Murle are
getting weapons and lorries from the old Arab enemy in Khartoum, the
Sudanese capital. That claim has not yet been proven. But the northerners
have long stirred up rivalry between the Dinka and other southern tribes in
order to divide and rule.
Some worry that, deprived of a common enemy in Khartoum, an independent
south may descend into inter-ethnic warfare. Last year more than 2,500
people were killed and 400,000 displaced, mostly after cattle raids between
the tribes. In 1991 the Nuer massacred Dinka civilians in Bor. Some Dinka
say tens of thousands of women and children were killed. South Sudan’s
vice-president, Riek Machar, a Nuer who was in charge of the attack, says
the Dinka exaggerate. Officials in Bor, all of whom are Dinka, say the
massacre has been forgiven but not forgotten. Mr Machar reconciled himself
with the SPLM’s Dinka leadership only in 2002.
Mr Kiir knows Dinka-Nuer rivalry could again turn violent and that, to
lessen the risk, he must hand more power to the Nuer and the Equatorians (in
the southernmost strip bordering Uganda) in a more federal arrangement. So
far he has sought to buy off the malcontents. But resentment has been
building up. The army is a shambles. Dinka complain that ill-qualified Nuer
are being over-promoted. Non-Dinka hiss that the Dinka have a lock on the
most lucrative posts.
If South Sudan is to prosper, the Dinka will not only have to share power
but also perform a lot more efficiently themselves. Since the war ended, 2m
southerners have returned to their homes. Four times as many children are
going to school than before. But the administration in Juba is chaotic. Many
millions of dollars of foreign aid have already gone astray. There is barely
50km (30 miles) of tarmac road in the entire region. Crucial contracts have
yet to be signed.
Dinka ministers in Juba talk grandly of bringing in tractors and turning
virgin land into a breadbasket. But who will drive the tractors or plant the
crops? By tradition, Dinka men despise manual labour and few have mechanical
skills. Most of the people in Bor who do the real work are Ugandan and
Ethiopian. “Work is not our strong point,” admits a Dinka official.
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