SOAS Research Online

Abstract

South Sudan is the newest country in Africa. Half a century of almost continuous civil war with Sudan – in which approximately 2.5 million people were killed and over 4 million people displaced. Weak institutional capacity and extensive government corruption have deepened dependence on international aid, which attempts to compensate for vast infrastructural gaps across a range of sectors: food, health, water, sanitation, education, governance, and the struggle for peace and security. As songs in South Sudan’s Nilotic pastoralist cultures are a key platform for oral histories and truth-telling – and are often invested with greater moral force than other forms of oratory. South Sudanese legal scholars John Makec and Wal Duany draw attention, respectively, to the moral authority carried by songs in Dinka and Nuer customary law, describing their role in civil hearings in facilitating a dynamic inter-animation between disclosure, listening, and conciliation.