The Sudan Handbook

PeoPles & cultuRes of tWo sudans 83

sequestered from the north by impassable swamplands, but under Turco-

Egyptian administration in the nineteenth century, Upper Nile and Bahr

al-Ghazal and areas to the south were opened as a hunting ground for

slaves, a time that is not forgotten in collective memory. In the twentieth

century the British colonial administration discouraged Arab and Islamic

influence in most of the region, and attempted, usually successfully, to

establish rule through chiefs, a system similar to the native administra-

tion in the north. Meanwhile missionary activity and Christian influence

grew. Today, many in the south are adherents of indigenous religions;

others have been Christians for generations; a few are Muslims; some

span more than one world of belief.

Southerners in rural areas – still the great majority – live variously as

sedentary farmers and as agro-pastoralists. In many parts of the south

there is a general aspiration to ownership of cattle. Cattle give status;

and are an important element in patterns of exchange and cooperation,

particularly in marriage negotiations, and often across apparent bound-

aries of ethnicity. But almost all of those commonly referred to as cattle

pastoralists also grow crops, and most practise seasonal fishing: the

choice of livelihood strategy is driven by geographical circumstance as

much as ethnic identity. In terms of indigenous political organization of

the peoples of the south there is also wide variation: some southerners

live in communities under the authority of a hereditary monarch; others

are reluctant to acknowledge any political authority at all, internal or

external.

The pattern of life of southern societies, as with those in the north,

is framed by the environment they inhabit. The basin of the White Nile,

the pastoral domain of southern Sudan, is a vast, grass-covered clay plain,

parched in the dry season and swampy in the rains. The population of

the floodplain and surrounding areas have adapted to these extremes of

climate by seasonal movement towards and away from the Nile or its

many tributaries, moving annually between wet-season villages, where

they cultivate a range of crops including dura (sorghum) and maize,

and dry-season cattle camps, close to rivers, where their herds can find

The Sudan Handbook, edited by John Ryle, Justin Willis, Suliman Baldo and Jok Madut Jok. © 2011 Rift Valley Institute and contributors grazing^ until^ the^ rains^ come^ again.

(www.riftvalley.net).