TRACING THE ROOTS OF THE LAND DISPUTES IN MY JONGLEI JONGLEUR ESCAPADES
By Jon Pen de Ngong
The book being partly prose and partly poetry, I can also import for you from one of my WhatsApp comments the following on land dispute issues…
Hon. Atem, you have raised a very pertinent concern here! If you mean Aboudit, then let me add my little eyewitness experiences up to four times in intervals over the last 40 years of my lifetime:
TRACING THE ROOTS OF THE LAND DISPUTES IN MY JONGLEI JONGLEUR ESCAPADES
1- In 1988, as a transhumant boy moving with our cattle camps, Aboudiit (the people) moved for days northeast, counting places by names and old folk songs…right from Aramjang to Lol, which is directly East of the Bucketwheel Ruins. I remember when we came home, we crossed the dry canal and pierced through from Longo and Maakir in the heart of Awulian village, and then forward southwest to Ajuong and Paker ‘toiches’.
The most puzzling scenario at that time is there were no cattle camps of Awulian or Twii around, save for one exclusive camp of Makuol Panyaang (from Ajuong). Maybe because the ‘Baer’ (Murle) had just devastated Awulian community a few weeks down the line. We witnessed that when our expedition hit their wide trail, strewn with ‘abɔ̈c and apët’ (pieces of pots and calabashes) and animal remains at Werawaar.
On our arrival at Lol (Lɔl), we were warned by elders and cattle camp leaders not to cross to Lol-dit without any ritual performed. The Aboudit community settled at Lol-thi or Lal-aken for two days till a man was fetched from Awulian village to carry out a sacrifice to usher us into their territory. The fear was that the borderline between ‘Tuic and Bor’ and the rest was guarded by the ancestors that needed that ritual of libation, not ‘liberation’ as the young zealots are baying for on the internet today.
Lal-aken, delimited by a small water body in the dry ‘loh’ or ‘aying’, and Lol-dit with a bigger ‘awuol’ (water catchment in the savanna aridity) had a buffer zone of about 5 or 10 kilometers in a south-north stretcher shape. It was safe for us (visitor boys) to graze our calves (dɛɛu) there. I can still remember my cousin, the now late Alith Ayuen Alith (‘Alith-maniir’…well known to Ajuong and Paker as the Bor pastoral envoy) composed a song there about Lol being ‘Aying-da’, our eastland. My childish question (I was barely under 10) was “if Lol is our ‘akeu’
(borderline) with Awulian, and others (including Murle and Nuer) for that matter, then what happened to the rest”? I did not address my question to any elder so I still do not have the answers of how, when, why, with who, etc.
When the ‘communications’ were settled, we attacked Loldit with fish spears. We, boys, could not manage for the water level was adult-chin high. After a while, our camp together with Makuoldit de Panyaang’s (the man who had referred to himself as a guest on Lol) migrated westwards, or back to ‘toch’, across the linear ‘Twii’ settlement. Of course, it was not only due to threat from the end of the autumnal season (rur) ushering in the Mäi (winter) one, which is spent at the so-called ‘toic’, but also for the Murle pressure. They gave lots of signal on our territorial excursion, sort of, and, of course, due to their material greed on our healthy wealth (cattle and myself, being also a ‘commodity’ in their package!).
With Makuoldit, we sluggishly dragged ourselves, with intermittent stopovers through a peaceful map of Twiiland, spending days at Maakir, Mading-Adiang, Adubaar, Payugul, Pacawei, Pakeerdit, Gerwer, etc. What a rich land! What a rich memory! I am already teeming with nostalgia of ‘my’ Pakeer and Ajuong lifetime…!
NB: The above piece is a summary of a chapter in my memoir entitled ‘THE JONGLEI JONGLEUR: IN THE BATTLE FOR THE CATTLE’, that I thought would be published in December 2012, had I not been put on the run for my life for 3 months and made refugee thereafter. I mean, I had the name of this country curved out of my own career aspirations right from high school…to turn Southern Sudan into a ‘Republic of Literatia’, little did I know that my own Salva Kiir and company had the final say, “Welle!”
2- Back to the main issue, Hon. Atem, this Land with her border labyrinth forms my daily worries for an impending war among the Jonglei communities. For instance, during my deliberate long shot to the end of our then ‘Borland’ (the Tom and Amankat activists should excuse me here for ‘they were not yet born’) as the founder and team leader of the then Bor Student Association (BOSTA, later BOYSA, and now GBYA), we heard in an elder’s speech on the inauguration of Dongcak Payam (January 2006) enough reasons why their Duk youth should sharpen their spears for full generation-length border wars with the Nuer and Murle.
“While I am no more there to warn or blame you, this Dongcak will be a wild ‘bii forest’ under a Nuer chief unless you behave like us and your ancestors,” the elder, whose name I have forgotten (with apologies), warned and cursed in his new Payam’s inaugural speech. The bitter man, in about 60s or 70s of age, wailed on on cattle raids, Aker oil finds and politicians as sources of the would-be forever conflict.
3- While conducting across greater Bor (in company of Deng Jogaak, Deng Ayok, John Jooyul Yol, Sarah Beriberi, Amel Karbino Kuanyin, among others) a Total E & P’s baseline survey on the planned oil exploration and exploitation in the August of 2008, we came across this bull elephant in the room of Jonglei State!
One, the map we were given (or that was available at the time) was, as I put it in the report, ‘a humanitarian one’…restricting Bor to a linear settlement in between the river and the road all the way from Pariak to Aker, the so-called ‘Ker’ in Gawaar terms.
Two, the communities and/or authorities were not consulted during the drawing of that troublesome map. Many speakers that we interviewed from Kolnyang to Poktap indicated the need to do a series of serious land settlement arbitration before exploring — leave alone exploiting — any natural resource there. For example, Sultan Majok Akuak Mayen (RIP), the then paramount chief of Jalle, did make a serious reference to that map cutting away their historically and physically owned ‘Aying Territory’.
Anyway, that Report to see Total company back to its original Block B area, was later killed by many factors, including the bitter land dispute over the plot of land that we assessed for the return of Total around Pariak/Malek area, between Guala and the large Family of Lual Ayen. That family embodies those of Uncle Moulana Abel, Dr. Chol Dau Diing, etc. by conjugal extension.
Anyway, the last nail was driven on the Total’s coffin by Kiir’s regime, especially during the tenure of that oil minister, the so-called ‘Mr. Booming’ (Ezekiel Lol Gatkuoth). Well, this is not part of my manuscript.
By the way, our research team had to hurriedly leave Bor over a very small but potentially huge threat from one community mis/understanding of some factor of that research, which I termed the ‘Okra Saga’ in my manuscript mentioned earlier on (THE JONGLEI JONGLEUR: In The Battle For The Cattle).
4- My last experience on this land dispute case was made very clear during my 3- year activism for peace in Jonglei State. As the leader for the Jonglei Civil Society Group during the All-Jonglei Community Peace Accord in 2012, I designed the routes of the Jonglei Peace Caravan (www.thejongleijongleur.wordpress.com). The Phase 1 of this met terrible resistance from the communities whose suspicion was pinned on our caravan being conducting secret land surveillance for rustlers. We were told this point-blank in the house of Gen. Peter Gatdet Yaka at Waat, as well as in a meeting with the Pibor commissioner, Joshua Kony Yirer, a year before.
However, my only solace was that the youth from the main 5 tribes of Jonglei were mixed and moved on rotation roster of MPC1 (Greater Bor based in Mareng, the Duk headquarters), MPC2 (Greater Pibor in Pibor town), MPC3 (Greater Akobo in Waat town) and MPC4 (Greater Fangak at Phom e Zaraf), which PMC is an abbreviation of ‘Mobile Peace Caravan’ from within what was in the project referred to as the ‘Tribal Conflict Triangle Confluence’ (TCTC) of Pibor-Bor-Akobo to the external one of Greater Pangak.
Of the 200 community and civil society youth activists that we commanded, the 4 camps were equipped with a unique peace-solving curriculum such as training and deploying of disarmed youths to ‘modern village’ construction projects, a concept that was brought by Gov. Kuol from his US tour in 2010, the formation of the community para-police force for community policing in the name Jonglei Peace Defence Youth (‘Jopedeyo’, a cool word in Kachipo/Suri), the Jonglei Trade Caravan that would bring forth ComCom Sacco or Cooperative (Community Commodity Cooperative Society) using a model my proposal called the ‘Cow Bank System’: converting cows or cattle camps into shops/markets or real estates, etc. all approved to be funded by the State (under Gov. Kuol Manyang) and USAID under the study by Borlaug Institute inside John Garang University but from Texas (USA).
Why do I bore you with all these dead projects? They were resisted on accounts of tribal land disputes and/or political suspicions, especially when we asked for the allocation and erection of ‘cow parks’ in the TCTC areas of Akobo, Pibor and Bor to handle the Jonglei Trade Caravan….Rest in peace John Chuol Mamuch, Karbino Kolen Dhulo, Modeses Wiyual Manytap, John Malueth Anyang, etc, who have gone raw just because somebody wanted to abort that piece of peace… all kidnaped and shot in the hands of their government’s ‘unknown gunmen’, except Chairman John Chuol who died of suspected poison!
The second leg that would involve all the chiefs was thwarted by the fact that the whole peace document was pocketed by President Kiir (to be implemented by J1) right after the signing. Also, the Devil made somebody gave David Yau Yau back his passport while still on Presidential Amnesty probation to go to Khartoum ‘for treatment’ just days after that victorious signing of the Peace Accord on May 5, 2012 in Bor, only to come back to launch his ‘Greater Pibor Area’ liberation war, that actually delivered GPAA from Bor to Juba One (J1). The Yau-Yau’s SSDM or Cobra Faction had land dispute as one of his issues. The rest is history…
