June 1998: A Dinka Peace Message for Nuer Chief Malwal Wun
Copyright © 2023 Sharon E. Hutchinson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Head-Chief Malwal Wun, 1998 in Ganyliel
Photo by Sharon E. Hutchinson
On June 10, 1998, a regionally prominent assembly of high-ranking Dinka Chiefs sent an urgent message of peace to the most senior of all western Nuer chiefs at that time, Head-Chief Malwal Wun, at his home base in Ganyliel, South(ern) Sudan. This critical message was laying the groundwork for the future success of “Wunlit Dinka and Nuer Peace Conference” held a year and a half later. In this website’s inaugural historical unit, you will be able to listen directly to these Chiefs’ words of peace, conveyed in both Dinka and Nuer, with a final segment in English, and to learn about the tense circumstances preceding and prompting this communication.
At its core, this is a story about the courage and determination of a small number of leading Dinka and Nuer chiefs to rise above the devastating waves of militarized inter-ethnic violence that began sweeping across their rural homelands eight years earlier, triggered off by a seismic rupture within the leadership of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/) that abruptly split the movement in 1991 into two warring southern factions, largely along ethnic lines. Although these Nuer and Dinka chiefs realized that their abilities to halt the cross-border cattle-raids and village attacks organized of rival SPLA field commanders, they succeeded nonetheless in planting the seeds of a broader grassroots peace movement amongst themselves and their civilian constituencies.
Our story begins on June 2, 1998 in Ganyliel, South Sudan. With the support of the Nuer Sudan Council of Churches, a small assembly of leading Dinka and Nuer chiefs were flown from their war-battered homelands in South Sudan to the Kenya border town of Lokichokkio, where they gather together with Nuer and Dinka church leaders and a South Sudanese and foreign conference moderators. The aspiration was to break through intensifying cycles of militarized violence and cross-community cattle-raiding from the grassroots upwards. Only two dozen people attended this week-long event. I was one of them. Remarkably, no South Sudanese politicians or military personnel were allowed to attend—something that created space for more candid and free-wheeling discussions among the assembled chiefs and church leaders.
Before attending the event, I had been conducting field research on this cycle of militarized post-1991 violence in vicinity of Ganyliel in the Western Upper Nile/Unity State, where I enjoyed good rapport with Chief Malwal Wun. When a small plane landed to transport me and three other western Nuer chiefs who gathered there, I was alarmed to discover that Chief Malwal Wun, for reasons unknown, had not been invited. I realized immediately that this was a serious oversight and spoke directly with the plane’s pilot, offering to give up my seat so that Chief Malwal Wun might board. As the most senior of all western Nuer chiefs who had served in that office since the early 1950s, I argued, his participation was crucial. “His name is not on the manifest,” the pilot countered: “I can’t let him on the plane.” I then boarded the plane with the other Nuer chiefs listed on the manifest, who were equally concerned about Chief Malwal Wun’s exclusion.
Upon arrival in Lokichokkio, I and other Nuer in attendance alerted the meeting’s organizers to this pressing problem. However, it was the refusal of attending Dinka chiefs to begin discussions without the presence of Chief Malwal Wun that proved decisive. On day three, a small plane was sent back to Ganyliel for the express purpose of retrieving Chief Malwal Wun. But he declined to board it. Because the reasoning behind Malwal Wun’s decision was not known to attendees, it was open to various interpretations, some hopeful and others less hopeful about the Chief’s peaceful intentions.
In the wake of this event, the Dinka and Nuer chiefs and church leaders decided to make the best of the situation and begin their discussions in earnest. The arch of their discussions, which I tape recorded over the following days, was fascinating. Most of these Dinka and Nuer Chiefs had known each other for decades and had communicated freely and cooperated to suppress instances of inter-communal violence and cattle-raiding up until the tragic 1991 splitting of the SPLM/A overwhelmed their efforts. Once rival SPLA military factions squared off and began targeting each other’s entire civilian populations and cattle herds along ethnic lines, all cross-movements and communications between Nuer and Dinka chiefs and their respective civilian populations ground to a dead halt. Everyone pulled back from formerly shared borderlands, creating a vast no-mans-land across which no Nuer or Dinka man or woman could cross without risk being labeled a “spy,” and being tortured and killed by opposed SPLA-faction military personnel. From that time on, all of these Nuer and Dinka chiefs had experienced violent military attacks in their home territories.
However, there was no initial agreement among these Chiefs about the deeper forces propelling this violence forward. They nonetheless agreed that this was not a “war of extermination” between “the Dinka” and “the Nuer”, as increasingly proclaimed by opposed leaders of formerly united, SPLM/A. “It is ‘the Arabs’ who are driving this conflict!” some Nuer and Dinka Chiefs reasoned. “No, this is a personal struggle between Garang and Riek over leadership,” hypothesized others. Still other chiefs rejected this idea, declaring: “If local field commanders were listening to Riek and Garang, this fight would already have stopped!” While all these chiefs described the increasingly brutal and militarized attacks experienced by their civilian populations since 1991, they remained perplexed and divided about the deeper forces propelling escalating pattern of inter-ethnic violence forward. Elsewhere I have explore the evolution and complexities of these discussions [“Peace and Puzzlement: Grassroots Peace Initiatives among the Nuer and Dinka of South Sudan”]. Here, I will simply summarize them by saying that the extreme candor evinced during these and other discussions gradually progressed into a shared understanding of the necessary terms for a lasting Dinka/Nuer civilian-based say that considerable peace agreement—terms that were subsequently expanded, codified and ratified, as it were, at the much larger “Wunlit Dinka/Nuer Peace Conference”.
Nevertheless, many Dinka and Nuer chiefs with whom I spoke remained uneasy on the final day of the conference on the 10 June 1998 about Chief Malwal Wun’s non-participation. Knowing this, and knowing that I would be flying the following day directly back to Ganyliel and Chief Malwal Wun, I first offered two concerned Nuer chiefs whether they would like the opportunity to send a message to Chief Malwal Wun via my tape recorder. They readily agreed to do so. I then approached attending Dinka Chiefs, offering them this same opportunity. They thought this was an excellent idea and immediately addressed Chief Malwal Wun directly through my tape recorder.
The following day, I played both messages for Chief Malwal Wun, who was amazed and delighted. “It is just as if I were there!” he beamed: “The Dinka really do want peace!” The Chief later asked me play this tape many times for his sub-chiefs and others groups of civilians from surrounding villages, and fresh waves of hope for a future restoration of regional peace rippled throughout the Ganyliel region and beyond. After first playing these Dinka chiefs message for Malwal Wun, I asked him if he would like to respond by sending a recorded message of his own back to them via my contacts in Lokichokkio. He promptly voiced his avid acceptance of the basic peace provisions negotiated and expressed his whole-hearted commitment to working together with these Dinka chiefs for renewed peace. I duly forwarded Chief Malwal Wun’s response to Lokichokkio and thus, I do not have it to share with you now. However, I hope those South Sudanese and others capable of understanding oral Dinka or Nuer—the message is fully rendered in both languages—will be inspired by both the directness and sincerity in which these Dinka chiefs committed themselves to working towards a complete cessation of inter-ethnic violence during an especially bleak period during South Sudan’s second civil war, which, of course, culminated many years later in the achievement of South Sudan’s political independence on July 9th 2011.