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Anuak Village Headmen1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

Godfrey Lienhardt
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Extract

The Anuak are a Nilotic people of the south-east of the Sudan and adjacent Ethiopia. They may number between 30,000 and 40,000 people, of whom at least two thirds live in Ethiopia, where a number of difficulties prevented me from visiting them. As described in Professor Evans-Pritchard's writings, two somewhat different political systems and forms of rule and leadership are found in the villages of Anuakland. In the south-east, several ecological and other circumstances have favoured the spread of the influence of a noble clan, members of which reign in villages which, according to tradition, were at one time politically isolated from each other and autonomous under local headmen. These villages of the noble clan are drawn, through the nobles associated with them, into competition for the acquisition of a single set of royal emblems, of which the most important are several ancient bead-necklaces. It seems that the influence of this noble clan has spread and is even now spreading farther among the villages of Anuakland, though in the land as a whole most villages are still under the sway of headmen chosen from lineages which traditionally provided them. It is with the organization of these villages, and the way in which their members change their headmen, that this paper deals.

Résumé

LES CHEFS DE VILLAGE ANUAK: (I) LES CHEFS ET LA CULTURE VILLAGEOISE

Cet article est le premier de deux communications, dont la deuxième traitera de la structure des villages anuak.

Les Anuak sont un peuple nilotique du Soudan méridional (République du Soudan) et de l'Éthiopie. La région sud-ouest de l'Anuakland est sous la domination d'un clan noble et les chefs de ses différents villages sont choisis parmi les membres de ce clan. Dans tout le reste de l'Anuakland, chaque village est autonome sous son propre chef, choisi parmi une lignée de chefs, qui est identifiée traditionnellement avec le village. Les chefs sont souvent remplacés au cours des ‘révoltes’ dans les villages. Celles-ci ont lieu lorsqu'une faction suffisamment puissante au sein du village se lasse du chef régnant et essaie de l'expulser, soit avec son assentiment, soit par la force. Cet article décrit quelques particularités de l'ambiance culturelle dans le cadre de laquelle ces révoltes ont lieu.

Les animosités et les rivalités entre villages ne sont pas très marquées. Les activités politiques des Anuak ont lieu, pour la plupart, au sein même du village. Les individus se déplacent librement et vont d'un village à un autre, notamment s'ils ont échoué dans un complot pour remplacer le chef régnant. A l'intérieur du village, les fermes sont très près les unes des autres et sont construites de telle façon que chaque famille vit plus ou moins cachée, ce qui permet de tramer en secret les complots au moyen desquels les chefs impopulaires sont finalement relevés de leurs fonctions.

Dans chaque village, la cour du chef, avec son langage spécial et autres détails de cérémonie et d'étiquette, constitue le centre de la vie sociale pour l'ensemble du village. Le chef garde les tambours du village et joue un très grand rôle dans les danses les plus importantes. Parfois, un chef opulent rassemble autour de lui une bande de jeunes gens du village, et en leur offrant des festins, il les attache à sa personne aussi longtemps qu'il est en mesure de leur faire des cadeaux. Lorsqu'il n'en est plus capable, ils le quittent. Les habitants du village font clairement comprendre, d'ailleurs, qu'ils accordent leur appui au chef pour leur propre avantage en tant que personnalité pour représenter le village, et non comme dirigeant autocratique.

Bien qu'un chef exerce une influence dans son village, il est obligé d'employer des moyens diplomatiques, y compris un service de renseignements, afin de s'informer des complots éventuels préparés contre lui et de concilier, entre elles et avec lui-même, les factions de lignée qui sont en conflit. Le rapport entre le chef et les gens du village est analogue, en quelque sorte, à celui qui existe entre les sexes dans l'Anuakland. Au cours des danses cérémoniaux, et de diverses autres façons, il est évident que le chef joue parfois le rôle de ‘ mari ’ de son village.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , October 1957 , pp. 341 - 355
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1957

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References

page 341 note 2 See especially Evans-Pritchard, E. E., The Political System of the Anuak of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1940Google Scholar, and ‘Further Observations on the Political System of the Anuak’, Sudan Notes and Records, xxviii, 1947. A successor of Professor Evans-Pritchard in the Anuak field cannot hope to add more than marginal comments to his analysis of the political system, though some additional details are of importance for the different kind of study which I attempt.

page 342 note 1 Professor Evans-Pritchard wrote: ‘There can be no doubt that headmen are often turned out of their villages. Even in the short time I spent in Anuakland, I had ample evidence of this custom. The kwäro (headman) of Ugin was driven out a few days before I entered the village. My last two days as Mr. Elliot-Smith's guest at Akobo were enlivened by constant drum-beating and firing of guns which signified that a revolution—an unsuccessful one as it happened—was taking place’ (op. cit., 1940, pp. 46, 47).

page 343 note 1 Op. cit., 1940, p. 22.

page 343 note 2 The ordinary Anuak rarely has more than one or two wives. A second or third wife usually stays in another home.

page 344 note 1 The Anuak are excellent and lively conversationalists, and their quick appreciation of wit and argument are part of a more general interest in the arts of life. Their level of material comfort and culture, and their cooking, show a refinement which I have not found among the pastoral Nilotes.

page 344 note 2 Op. cit., 1940, p. 41.

page 345 note 1 Ibid., A noble always has male cooks, and always eats in the privacy of a special hut and courtyard.

page 345 note 2 Op. cit., 1940, p. 66.

page 346 note 1 The traditional owners of a village site may not be the same as the traditional dominant lineage of the village in a social sense.

page 349 note 1 Anuak marriages are sometimes broken in order to pay debts contracted by other members of the family.

page 349 note 2 It may be remembered that the king of the related Shilluk is supposed to remain vigilant at night.

page 350 note 1 Evans-Ptitchard, E. E., op. cit., 1947, p. 95.Google Scholar

page 350 note 2 The same ambivalence is shown in relation to the type of administration said to prevail on the Ethiopian side of the frontier. There, it is said, the soldiery may attack a village one day, but eat out of the same gourd with the villagers the next day.

page 351 note 1 One is reminded of the statement ‘I must follow them: I'm their leader’.

page 353 note 1 The importance of this competitive display in relation to headmanship is further discussed in the second part of this paper.

page 354 note 1 This is also an important factor for the understanding of the spread of noble influence, cf. E. E. Evans-Pritchard, op. cit., 1947, pp. 77, 78: ‘They are a democratic people who brook any authority ill, but they love the pomp of a noble's court, the ceremonial beating of drums, the processions, the etiquette of court life, which give the village prestige in the eyes of its neighbours and make its people feel important.’

page 354 note 2 ‘Village Structure and “Rebellion”’, to be published in a subsequent number of Africa.