The Sudan Handbook

tRaditional authoRity, loCal GoVERnmEnt & JustiCE 187

or more powerful, such as that of religious and spiritual authorities. The

state-recognized local judicial institutions are only ever one among a

number of potential sources of dispute resolution. But the fact that they

have become an accepted one demonstrates the way in which people

have come to engage with the state as manifested in its local forms,

despite its alien, colonial origins and continuing questionable legitimacy.

State weakness or even failure, often attributed to Sudan’s postcolonial

history, does not therefore preclude engagement with the state at the

local level. And the most widespread motive for such engagement has

been the search for justice and for rights to land and other resources.

The Hakuma

John’s county court is a brick building that forms part of the merkaz,

the offices of the district or county government, located in the centre

of the town since the early colonial period. Often these government

centres were located on the sites of former stations of the Turco- Egyptian

government and of the traders who had travelled southwards from the

mid-nineteenth century in search of ivory and slaves. To the north,

provincial towns had already formed under precolonial states or under

the Turkiyya or Mahdiyya. For local people, towns were the government,

the hakuma, as the Sudanese state is widely known. And in many areas,

the towns and government were also associated with the military. Some

southern languages, for example, use words for government that also

relate to the army and military officers, or refer to officials – whether

British or Sudanese – as ‘Turks’. Across Sudan, the military associations

of government are underlined by the style of uniforms worn by local

government officers. The alien origins of the hakuma and its specific urban

loci have contributed to the historical sense of distance between rural

communities and the state.

Local people have, however, long been drawn into the merkaz, as

military or police recruits, government employees, traders, or even

prisoners. Throughout much of the colonial period, the district-level

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors government was headed by a British district commissioner, who in turn

(www.riftvalley.net).