Introduction

Murle society is non-hierarchical and political power is diffused to the extent that there are no institutional leadership roles. It is thus often represented as lacking credible and legitimate governance structures. While Murle society is acephalous and egalitarian, in that there is no single leader like a king and decisions are instead taken collectively, there are clear authority structures that should be understood.[1]

The above representations are, quite significantly, part of the narrative that feeds into the negative stereotypes of Murle society as ungovernable and instable, which is why it is particularly important to unpack them. These stereotypes and representations continue to have tangible consequences in Murle people’s lives and in how Pibor is perceived by both aid actors and the wider South Sudanese population. It also affects how humanitarian, peacebuilding and development programmes carry out their programmes in the area. Specifically, if aid agencies do not understand the social structures underpinning the societies they are working in, and that together establish pathways to authority, their programmes will, at best, not succeed. At worst, interventions will contribute to weakening legitimate authority structures and, thus, to conflict. Agencies need to understand the core social institutions in Murle society and how these establish public authority in order to ensure their programmes are conflict sensitive, do not contribute to erode authority, and are based on genuine community buy-in.

As published elsewhere, the challenge then is not the lack of credible authority figures, but rather their abundance and, as a consequence, the difficulties of outsiders in navigating these.[2] This blog post provides some insights into the complex layers of authority in Murle society that intertwine the four social institutions of the age-sets (buul), the drumships (kidoŋwa), clans (boor) and the spiritual authority of the red chiefs (alat ci meriik). It also offers some brief reflections on how these have been affected by ongoing conflict and militarisation, followed by some conflict sensitivity considerations for aid workers operating in Pibor.

Adaptive age-sets

First, some words on the age-set system, also known as generations, that is the most all-encompassing of the key Murle social institutions, also because of the defensive role it continues to play in the community. Murle age-sets are social groups consisting of men of a similar age interval spanning roughly a 10-year period, though this period has reduced. All Murle boys and men are affiliated with an age-set, ranging from the village level, to urban spaces all the way to diasporas in East Africa or as far as Australia. Every Murle man belongs to and is socially situated in an age-set, according to one’s age and position in the family, even if he is not necessarily active in it. Girls and women will belong to their father’s and then eventually to their husband’s age-set and are often the ones wearing the visible symbols of the age-set, especially the beads with the colours representing the age-set token animals.[3] As boys reach puberty they are assimilated into the youngest age-set, and either remain in that group for life, or eventually break away to form a new age-set, a process that has become increasingly violent.

Central to the construction of an age-set identity is the competition over power and marriage rights within the community. The age-set system provides a ritualised and socially acceptable means of controlling and mediating these social contestations between men and women, but especially between older and younger competing age-sets. Age-sets remain central to how people configure relationships and support systems, and to men and women’s sense of identity, belonging and certainty. Age-sets, as other social institutions, are highly adaptive and have become, for better and worse, integral to how individuals make sense of the state and its political maneuverings.

Murle drumships and clans

There are four overarching lineage lines in Murle society, that are also known as drumships because the drum was the symbol of ancestry and power, but these drums have now been lost. These four drumships, which in order of seniority are Thangajon, Ngarothi, Ngenvach and Kelegnya, can be understood as the institution above the clans. Drumships are important because they determine seniority of red chief authority. Each drumship has several clans within them: those who are red chief clans, alath ci meriik: ruling clans who embody spiritual authority; and those known as black commoner clans, ol ci kolik.

Each drumship is associated with certain parts of Greater Pibor. For instance, Thangajon are most common across Boma and Lekuangole, while Ngarothi are most common in the areas of Gumuruk/Kubal and Pibor. Clans are also significant in that they determine marriage relationships and prohibitions. Notably, one cannot marry from one’s clan as it would be like marrying someone from one’s own family.

Spiritual and moral authority of chiefs

Each age-set is a unit where decisions are made based on consensus. Each age-set has its own red chiefs, whose seniority is defined through the drumships and clans, that play an important leadership role both within their own age-set as well as representing their age-set in external relations. Thus, they are considered the actual leaders of their age-set and, by virtue of their inherited spiritual authority, they control the age-set and are the actual representatives in any talks. Historically the prime holders of law and order in the community, red chiefs continue to derive their authority as a traditional God-given right, passed down from father to sons, who will take up leadership in their respective age-sets. All their children and lineage have the spiritual authority of red chiefs. This is in contrast to government chiefs—a legacy of the colonial system of indirect rule—who derive their authority from their relationship with the state.

Before the integration of the state, red chiefs managed all community affairs. Through their spiritual role, red chiefs exerted moral influence and thus played an important role in public authority. The authority of red chiefs continues to be very decentralised and localised and there are many, many red chiefs in each age-set that will exercise their role in their geographical area from family disputes to large-scale conflict. This power was and continues to be exercised through the ability to curse, a threat that still holds a lot of currency especially in rural areas. By virtue of their social and spiritual status, red chiefs were the natural leaders in their respective age-set, and are responsible for age-set meetings and final decision-making.

Although the spiritual authority of red chiefs is separate from the civil and administrative authority represented by sultans and government chiefs, it is very common to find government chiefs that are also red chiefs. The most influential leaders are those able to speak the cultural and moral language that their constituents understand and to which they can relate. Leaders who recognize and embrace this are able to draw on multiple sources of legitimacy and authority and thus command respect among their communities.

Conflict, militarisation and crisis of authority

The four social institutions discussed here together establish public authority in Murle society and every person is bound by them, because everyone will belong to an age-set, a drumship and clan, and thus be from a ruling red chief or black commoner clan. But it is also true to say these institutions are struggling to cope with the pressures of long-term conflict and the militarisation of society. So, what has happened to challenge these pathways and how have these institutions transformed? Violent conflict and, the often, forceful incorporation of the state into people’s lives have affected how social institutions are experienced and their resilience to address an increase in that same violence, leading also to a shift in moral codes.[4] We touch upon four key factors that help understand the crisis of public authority experienced in Murle society:

1. The decline of the spiritual authority of red chiefs

Red chiefs used to play a central role in maintaining law and order in society, and in some rural areas they still do. Their spiritual authority was feared through their God-given ability to curse one to death if refused to obey their directives. But the incorporation of the modern state, and subsequent multiplication of chiefs, and the proliferation of small arms in the hands of civilians has led to a decrease in the fear of red chiefs, connected also to a generational disconnection. This has also meant that age-sets are handling cases independently without consultation with other more senior red chiefs.

2. The fragmentation of age-sets

Conflict and widespread small arms availability, and ensuing decline in the respect of red chief spiritual authority has led to both an increase in the importance of age-sets, as well as well as their fragmentation. This has resulted in not just greater intra-Murle fighting, where age-sets compete for dominance, but also sub-groups within each age-set also resorting to violence to compete within the age-set.[5] Previously, when a new age-set emerged, ritualised age-set competition used to be practiced through stick-fighting ceremonies and mediated by elders and red chiefs, who would bless the fighting youth to protect them from death. The widespread availability of small arms has seen the use of guns in age-set competition and how young age-set red chiefs relate to red chiefs in older age-sets.

3. Changing family structure, generational disconnect and grazing patterns

From the ages of 12 or 13 and above, Murle boys were expected to literally be ‘taken far’ for a long period in cattle-camp grazing areas during the long dry season to tend for their cattle and become ‘men of cattle’, thin ci mac, ultimately where they were expected to graduate from childhood to youthhood. This is also connected to how new age-sets emerge and find grazing areas together, burri. Whereas before, people would migrate to dry season grazing areas as village units, now they migrate as age-sets, which means there is significantly less social control and opportunities for older generations, fathers, uncles, mothers, to exert their authority and wisdom to their sons.

4. Politicisation of age-sets and chiefs

The politicisation of age-sets started in the post-independence era and has become pervasive. Politicians try to control and instrumentalise certain age-sets for their own political interests and gain. Similarly, government chiefs used to be selected through open elections but the last decade has seen an increase in political and government authorities interfering and appointing chiefs based on their self-interest.

Conflict sensitivity considerations for aid actors

Aid agencies operating in Greater Pibor need to understand how society operates and how spheres of authority are established and develop their programmes and community engagement on the basis of these. Not doing so means that, at the very least, their programmes are ineffective. Most significantly, programmes that do not understand Murle society risk undermining social structures and eroding authority, ultimately contributing to an increase in conflict in the area.

In this light, we invite readers to visit www.murleheritage.com website, intended to be a resource and provide an easily accessible platform for those interested in learning more about Murle society. We also offer some conflict sensitivity considerations for aid actors, especially concerned with navigating the four key social institutions that make up public authority and how they are experienced:

• Considerations of Murle public authority and how to approach legitimate community structures needs to take into account the complex internal hierarchies of red chiefs, especially in terms of drumships, clans and the politics of age-sets. They also need to account for how chiefs creatively and strategically deploy and make use of different sources of authority and power to make their voices heard.
• Aid actors dealing with specific age-sets (in a particular area) should consider the age-set’s red chief, as well as two other influential roles when it comes to age-set decision-making and consensus-building. These positions are, typically, an articulate communicator from a black commoner clan (‘logoz o kolik zo zo’); and a brave fighter, known as olenya (after the word bull). Ultimately, the last decision is taken by the age-set red chiefs.
• Murle government chiefs have limited control over youth who engage in acts of violence, including raiding and abduction, and this needs to be internalised by external actors in order to reconfigure realistic expectations around authority and legitimacy. While working with chiefs and political leaders is important, an additional focus must be placed on the age-set structure and the red chiefs within them, in particular the youngest age-sets still looking to establish themselves, in order to target and engage with people who might be able to successfully curb violence.
• Thoroughly understanding and interacting with the age-set system is vital when developing humanitarian, development and peacebuilding programming across all sectors. For instance, in livelihoods programming, men in young age-sets will not engage in farming activities, though men from older age-sets will.
• Recognise and engage with organic community authority structures. While it is important to engage with formal structures such as the government-affiliated Youth Committee and Women’s Union in Pibor, these should be recognised as having limited reach and legitimacy with the broader community outside of towns. Connectedly, creating new artificial community structures and groups that suit aid priorities and agendas can, at best, be useless and collapse at the end of the project; at worst, have harmful effects on legitimate indigenous structures.
• Initiatives that originate from and are embedded in Murle indigenous practices, like the women-led Kabarze[6] that some years ago played an important role in de-escalating age-set tensions, should not be co-opted by aid agencies, because they lose their legitimacy in the eyes of the young men. By exerting pressure in indigenous organisations, and aligning them with government and NGO priorities and agendas, these lose their legitimacy and flexibility.
• Ensure that international and national aid workers that work long- or short-term in Pibor do not propagate harmful stereotypes of Murle society, nor perpetuate anti-Murle bias by providing trainings on code of conduct, ethics and cultural understanding.
• All Murle men belong to an age-set and cannot escape this aspect of social and cultural identity, including Murle male NGO staff. As a large number of NGO staff are from Lango and Kurenen age-sets, there will likely be cases of NGO staff members interested in dropping/defecting from Kurenen to emerging age-sets like (Guzule) in the coming months or years. While this makes them vulnerable to age-set troubles, NGO employers must employ a culturally-sensitive lens and seek to understand the specific circumstances surrounding any age-set tensions a given employee may be involved in.

[1] Acephalous means a society without a formal head that does not have institutionalized systems of authority.

[2] Diana Felix da Costa, ‘Changing Power Among Murle Chiefs: Negotiating Political, Military and Spiritual Authority in Boma State, South Sudan’, South Sudan Customary Authorities Project (Juba: Rift Valley Institute, 2018), https://riftvalley.net/publication/changing-power-among-murle-chiefs.

[3] Diana Felix Da Costa and John Boloch, ‘What Can the Changing Tastes in Body Scarification Tell Us about the Lives and Aspirations of Murle Youth? | Rift Valley Institute’, Rift Valley Institute (blog), 24 January 2023, https://riftvalley.net/news/what-can-changing-tastes-body-scarification-tell-us-about-lives-and-aspirations-murle-youth.

[4] Naomi Pendle, ‘Competing Authorities and Norms of Restraint: Governing Community-Embedded Armed Groups in South Sudan’, International Interactions 0, no. 0 (12 May 2021): 1–25; Jok Madut Jok and Sharon E. Hutchinson, ‘Sudan’s Prolonged Second Civil War and The Militarization of Nuer and Dinka Ethnic Identities’, African Studies Review 42, no. 02 (September 1999): 125–45.

[5] Felix Da Costa and Boloch, ‘What Can the Changing Tastes in Body Scarification Tell Us about the Lives and Aspirations of Murle Youth? | Rift Valley Institute’.

[6] Diana Felix Da Costa, ‘The Kabarze: A Novel Platform for Women’s Involvement in Age-Set Tensions’, Murle Heritage (blog), 8 April 2022, https://www.murleheritage.com/videos/the-kabarze-womens-involvement-in-age-set-tensions.