South Sudan
- works
- 2
- 2 books
- period covered
- 1969–1974
- language of writing
- English
On 9 July 2011, in Juba, at the mausoleum of John Garang, the Speaker of Parliament, James Wani Igga, read the proclamation of independence before tens of thousands of people, and the flag of the new state was raised. The Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir attended the ceremony, alongside Salva Kiir, who gave his first speech as head of state. Six months earlier, in the January referendum, 98.83% of voters had chosen separation.
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Conquered by Egypt from 1820, the South was then plundered by slave hunters, then passed under Anglo-Egyptian administration, which developed it less than the North. A first civil war broke out in 1955, a few months before the independence of Sudan, and lasted until the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972; a second ran from 1983 to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005, which provided for the referendum. A new civil war began in December 2013, two years after independence. The country has more than sixty peoples, of whom the two most numerous, the Dinka and the Nuer, are herders of the Nile basin. English is the official language, and Juba Arabic is spoken in the towns.
Taban Lo Liyong, born in the South but raised in Uganda, published in 1969 in Nairobi essays asking how to cure East Africa of its literary barrenness. Francis M. Deng, the son of a Dinka chief, gathered his people's songs in 1973 and their tales in 1974, before writing two novels, in 1986 and 1989. Stella Gaitano, born in Khartoum in 1979, writes in Arabic; settled in Juba in 2012, after losing Sudanese nationality, she published in 2018 a novel translated into English in 2023. In 2013 there appeared in San Francisco the first collection of short stories presented under the name of the new country, eight texts written in English. The price, here, is exile: Taban Lo Liyong taught in Nairobi, Dar es Salaam and Port Moresby, Deng made his career at the United Nations and in the United States, and the authors of the 2013 collection lived in Juba, New York, Nairobi, Sydney, London or Calgary.
What awaits the reader is the English of an essayist and a translator, tales and songs of herders in which cattle hold a large place, and books published before 2011, when the South was still part of Sudan. The book that opens this page appeared in 1969 from the East African Publishing House, in Nairobi; in it its author discusses Achebe, Okot p'Bitek and négritude.
A way to begin
The Last Word
Taban Lo Liyong · 1969
The fighting essays of a poet born in the South: how to cure East Africa of its literary barrenness?
Essays of criticism, polemic and confidence, written in English. In them the author speaks of his father, his wife and his art, asks how to cure East Africa of its literary barrenness, discusses Achebe, Okot p'Bitek and négritude, and defends the right of an African writer to draw on all cultures.
Timeline
- 1955–1972The first civil warBegun a few months before the independence of Sudan, it ends with the Addis Ababa Agreement.
- 1969–1974Taban Lo Liyong and DengFighting essays published in Nairobi, then the songs and tales of the Dinka.
- 2011IndependenceThe January referendum, then the proclamation of 9 July in Juba.
Reading keys
- Among the Dinka, each son receives the colour pattern of an ox according to his mother's rank, and at initiation he becomes known by names drawn from that ox.
- A child born in time of war may be called Tong, or Atong for a girl, among the Dinka, the Nuer and the Shilluk.
- Bridewealth is often paid in cattle, and the groom's extended family contributes to it.
- Among the Nuer, when a man dies without having married, his kin marry a woman in his name, so that he may have an heir.
- “Southern Sudan” referred to the region before independence; this name is avoided for today's state.
- The civil war that began in December 2013 took on an ethnic colouring, and belonging to a people is a delicate subject.
- Contradicting, criticising or ignoring an elder makes a bad impression, and insulting one is considered a serious offence.
- Family matters are settled within the family, and more than nine cases in ten, civil or criminal, come under customary law.
- Catholic missionaries arrived in 1842, and the first mission opened at Gondokoro in 1852.
- The majority of the inhabitants are Christian, mostly Catholic or Anglican; during the wars, Christianity marked resistance to Khartoum's plan for an Islamic state.
- The Dinka pray to a creator god, Nhialic, and to ancestral spirits, and clans provide priests called “masters of the fishing spear”.
- In 2019, at the Vatican, Pope Francis knelt to kiss the feet of the country's leaders, and in February 2023 he came to Juba with the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Moderator of the Church of Scotland.
- Boys' initiation long left marks on the forehead, three parallel lines among the Dinka, six among the Nuer.
- Young Dinka men compose songs for their ox, and dances and songs often imitate cattle.
- Among the Dinka and the Nuer, burial is quick, and funerals centre more on the sacrifice of animals than on care of the body.
- Most couples hold a Christian ceremony, then a ceremony according to custom.
- 9 July 2011 and the mausoleum of John Garang, in Juba, are the reference point of independence.
- The Comprehensive Peace Agreement of 2005, which ended the second civil war, opened the way to the referendum.
- Taban Lo Liyong is the country's best-known literary figure.
- The Dinka have more than four hundred words for cattle, their movements, their diseases, their colours and their forms.
- South Sudan has been a state distinct from Sudan since 2011, and its cultures differ from those of the North.
- English is the official language, but it is not the language of conversation of most inhabitants, especially in the villages.
- Taban Lo Liyong was taken to Uganda as a young child and studied there; he is here for his country of birth.
- Dinka Folktales bears the subtitle “African Stories from the Sudan”: in 1974 the South was part of Sudan.
Tales and mythologies 1
- TaleDinka FolktalesFrancis M. Deng · 1974The tales of a people of Nile cattle-herders, collected and put into English by a son of a Dinka chief.Literature