The Dinka of south Sudan:

Struggling to Retain a Traditional Livelihood within a Modern Resource War

“He is self-sufficient in a way not easily explained by the simplicity of his desires.”

–Francis M. Deng [on the Dinka as a collective body]

Homeland of the Dinka relative

A Geographic Introduction

The Dinka are the largest ethnic group in the isolated southern Sudan region, numbering around 2 million people, though not in a contiguous settlement pattern. They are a prime example of a people group whose culture is wholly based off of the learned behavior of their immediate environment.

Since they have not, until recently, desired to venture out into the outside world, they remain a very ethnocentric and highly dignified people. In fact, the name the Dinka call themselves is Monyjang, which means “The Man of Men,” denoting the belief they are superior to any foreigner. Yet, while viewing themselves as Lords of Men, the Dinka are willing slaves of the cattle that their livelihood largely depends on. The Dinka is never so happy as when watching, tending, and talking about his cattle. As we will see, cattle do not simply mean sustenance and wealth, but are used to mediate all aspects of Dinka society in conflict resolution. The people may not always respect one another, but they never lose respect for their cattle. Thus, cattle are highly symbolic in serving to bring the people back into cooperation with one another by creating an awareness of their common cultural identity.

to modern political borders:

Source: Deng 1972. The Dinka of the Sudan, p. iv.

Dinkaland occupies a vast territory in the marshlands created by the many tributaries west of the White Nile, interrupted only by a relatively small enclave occupied by the Nuer tribe. Most of this area falls into two of the three Southern provinces of Sudan, Bahr-el-Ghazal and Upper Nile, but one Dinka tribe, the Ngok, is now administered as part of the largely Arabized Kordofan Province. Remarkably, the Ngok Dinka, despite being subject to Arab influences constantly and separated geographically from the true Dinkaland, have been able to retain their core cultural identity.

During the 18th and 19th centuries the Dinka expanded their control over southern Sudan. This was largely because the colonial mother, Great Britain, preferred to keep the black Africans in the south isolated from northerners so no major conflicts over ethnicity and religion would arise. Recent history and the present Sudanese situation prove just how shallow this thinking was. However, while the Dinka were able to expand their grazing lands in the south, the actions of Sudanese and Egyptian slave raiders seriously weakened the various Dinka chieftaincies. Nevertheless, they persistently resisted both Turkish-Egyptian control in the 19th century and British in the 20th. Now only time will tell if the Dinka today can maintain their cultural resilience to the encroaching forces of the rapidly globalizing modern world and authoritarian decisions made by the fundamentalist Government of Sudan.

Physically, the Dinka are most noted for their exceedingly tall and slender build as well as some of the blackest skin on earth. Culturally, it is their deep connection to the cattle they herd and being known as some of the richest cattle owners with bridewealth sometimes going as high as 200 head of cattle. The Dinka are divided into 25 subgroups, each of which has its own name. Each once occupied a distinct territory, but much has changed since becoming integrated into the oppressive modern nation-state of Sudan in 1956. They are culturally classified as a Nilotic people group (of the Nile River), their closest cultural and physical affinities being with the Nuer and Shilluk tribes, also struggling to remain self-sustaining cultural economies.

Cattle at a trough, as the Dinka look

on with pride and admiration

Environment

The Dinka live in an equatorial environment of vast marshlands in between the numerous tributaries fed by the White Nile half the year, and sparse woodland/savannah vegetation the other half, though time spent in each zone depends on the magnitude of the rains (or lack thereof). Their migration routes typically alternate between these equatorial marshlands in the dry months and drier highlands to the north during the wet season. The largest contiguous swampland known as the Sudd, meaning “barrier” in Arabic, lies adjacent to much of Dinkaland, and is primarily inhabited by the Nuer, another cattle herding tribe often in dispute with the Dinka over resources. The Dinka rely on rain cultivation rather than implementing irrigation devices to raise their crops because so much of the tributary waters evaporate in the humid climate. The one exception is their small plots of tobacco that are cultivated during the dry season because the plants adapt quite well if cultivated in moderation. The Dinka do not intensify the little agriculture they do practice because the environment is too volatile to support the beginnings of a sedentary lifestyle. If the Dinka were to adopt a more sedentary lifestyle and be greater determinants of what the land provides, they would be highly susceptible to water-borne diseases with the wide presence of stagnant water in a tropical climate. Indeed, every people group in this drought and flood-prone region of the eastern Sahel are at least semi-nomadic out of sheer necessity. The adverse climate and other factors of their environment simply does not allow for such a year round dependence on the land, which I would say benefits the continuation of subsistence society in the long run. The mindset of risk minimization rather than profit maximization thus necessarily becomes a top priority and one not easily dissolved, even by the lures of the foreign market world.

Settlement Pattern and the Four Seasons

Settlement patterns and land use are largely determined by the four seasons recognized by the Dinka, which do their best to track the erratic climate in the region. Following the seasons, they primarily practice transhumance. During Ker, from May to early July, the first, though definitely not the strongest, rains fall. It is during this time that the previously cleared fields are planted, and the cattle gradually are driven back to camp near the villages and provide milk for the villagers. The wettest season then follows, whereby the swarms of mosquitoes get thick and it becomes necessary to protect the cattle in byres at night. This Ruel period of heavy rains is when the Dinka are most sedentary and the agricultural harvest is brought in. The end of this season is marked with the end of the rains, the first crop ripe for harvest, and the cattle once again grazing on lands farther away from the villages. It is in this time that the cultivated fields well on their way to the second crop must be protected from the cravings of the cattle. Conflicts will arise between cattle owners and those who own the fields during this over who has senior rights. These seasons of high resource extraction are followed by the two dry seasons of Rut and Mai, of which the latter is the hottest and water supplies are difficult to come by. The Dinka are highly nomadic at this time to search for better lands and prevent the spread of disease. From November to April, they move with their herds down to the swampy tributaries of the Nile River from their semi-permanent settlements on the high veldt. They have learned that this is an area that can still support grazing when all other pasture is parched as the lowlands follow a more equatorial climate pattern. The camps are run primarily by young men and girls (prospective wives). This time of the year traditionally provides for many more leisure activities than any other, though such times have become rarities with the ongoing civil war. It is important to preserve this seasonal movement not only for their physical survival, but also because it is during this leisure time that strong social ties are formed.

The Dinka are inherently born with a readiness to migrate great distances if need be to search out new grazing grounds. However, Francis Deng reminds us that the common belief that the Dinka lead a semi-nomadic life is only true in the case of young men accompanying cattle in temporary camps in search of better grazing areas. Otherwise, Dinka villages are fairly permanent. Such villages are commonly composed of sleeping huts constructed on stilts complemented by cattle byres, usually about four times the size of the huts but interchangeable. The thatch used on the huts is known to be amazingly smooth, and Dinka huts can last well over decade. This is no easy feat in a country of rudimentary technology and a land plagued with termites and other pests.

Ecological Regions of the Sudan:

Traditional Economy

The self-sustaining peoples of southern Sudan can be argued to collectively possess different classical segmented political systems based on kinship and the lay of the land. This results in a highly decentralized economy, making it difficult for such peoples to unite under one leader in stating desires for autonomy from the exploitative northern Arab government. Rather, the Dinka continue to adapt to each crisis as it comes and alter political affiliations if needed, rarely looking to profit from new trading partnerships with a neighboring tribe. For these southern Sudan traditional economies, it has been the mixing together of pastoralist, agriculturalist, and hunter-gatherer practices that constitutes an important survival strategy. In the not uncommon event of widespread drought and crop failure, the flexibility of the Dinka people to move between modes of subsistence as a learned crisis response strengthens their socio-cultural thread (though it weakens there socio-economic identity within the capitalist world).

The cultural and economic heritage of the Dinka is centered on their cattle. The tradition of periodic migration to cattle camps (wut) is integral to the survival of southern Sudan pastoral ecology. The standard way to acquire cattle is bridewealth, though they are also exchanged through gifts of friendship or trade. Often by way of the constant circulation of their cattle, the Dinka clearly practice an informal type of balanced reciprocity, whereby a starving man has the unspoken right to seize the nearest goat or cow with the tacit understanding that it will be repaid by him or an able relative in time. As the Dinka saying goes: “What is given circulates, and what is consumed is wasted.” There is no doubt that generalized reciprocity is practiced as well, especially with increasing times of crisis responses. To the Dinka, cattle and one another is all they need to satisfy their needs in this world. Traditionally, it is viewed as suicidal and a great threat to one’s relatives, if a Dinka ventures outside their homeland. Most of the Dinka’s numerous songs are written about cattle and the lordship the beast has over man. The close relationship between singing (as a means of creating social harmony in otherwise painful situations), cattle and Dinka economy is evident throughout all Dinka songs. The hardship of the herding lifestyle, disputes over cattle, contemplation and admiration of what cattle provide, and pride in the cattle riches of one’s family are all common subjects of Dinka songs that give identity to these people.

With the Dinka belief that immortality is gained through procreation, the rate of population increase for the Dinka is one of the highest in the world. Yet, the Dinka also have one of the highest mortality rates as a result of their harsh environment and ways of coping with it. Thus, their deep connection to the land has created a natural population limiting system in tune with the carrying capacity. Naturally, this makes the Dinka a very hardy people accustomed to regular suffering. Increasing displacement of their tribal structures by the modernized North, however, has put them in a situation where population declines with a loss of traditional defense mechanisms.

The Place of Myth

Myths pervade throughout Dinka culture as an accepted way of explaining the problems confronting the Dinka today, and are often told through daylight dances (see picture). Baum tells us of one that would profoundly affect their relationship with their environment: “The Dinka of Sudan describe a time when the supreme being hovered just over the earth and provided humans with a grain of millet a day, which was sufficient for all their food needs. According to one version of this myth, one day a woman decided to plant more than the one grain allotted to her. When she raised her hoe in the air to plant it, she poked the supreme being, Nhialic, in the eye. Nhialic withdrew into the sky, and death and hardship became forces in Dinka life.” This myth presents the belief that agriculture came about because of greed and the evil desire to store up foods for the future. This is frowned upon within Dinka society. The Dinka believe (with incredible insight) that agriculture is harmful to depend upon as a primary means of subsistence.

Dinka oral tradition and history tends to be less presumptuous in its claims to objectivity than written history. Indeed, oral history is particularly remarkable in its flexibility and adaptability to contextual purposes. Myths are told in great detail and with remarkable consistency across their vast savannah homeland.

Dances are traditionally held in the light of day

to acknowledge pride of Dinka culture

Cultural Ecology

By operating as a subsistence economy that has relied upon what the land gives in season, the Dinka have always been very efficient and responsible about exploiting their local environment. It is precisely this indigenous knowledge that has enabled them to survive in such a naturally volatile environment, though the continuing national war is seriously threatening their survivalist strategies and conflict response mechanisms.

Though cattle do dominate their lives, the Dinka are semi-nomadic in that they are both pastoralists and agriculturalists depending on what the seasons provide. They will always have to keep moving to search for new grazing lands for their herds, but they also make use of fertile soil to cultivate crops (primarily millet) when the opportunity presents itself. In addition, they will engage in supplementary activities such as fishing and hunting along their migration routes. When the Dinka do cultivate the land, they rely almost entirely on rainfall to cultivate their crops. The volatile environment the Dinka have adapted to makes intensive farming impractical, even if a large water diversion project were to be constructed by the World Bank or similar development organization.

Resource Use

The Dinka economy, as I’ve said, is a subsistence one based on livestock herding, agriculture and fishing. It is the elders who control wealth and the productive, albeit wise, extraction of resources. The Dinka will cultivate little of the land available to them, and the harvest often is below the subsistence level. Part of this has to do with the Dinka conviction that storing up food is miserly. Constraints to agricultural production and marketing (aside from the environment) for all peoples in southern Sudan include “poor infrastructure, lack of access to capital, and low-level agricultural technical efficiency and skills needed to succeed in the world economy,” according to US AID’s site for Sudan. With the ongoing civil conflict’s flame being fanned by foreign exploitation of resources dictated by the unsympathetic Arab central government in the north, peoples of this region have been plunged into deeper economic isolation with miniscule access to global markets. Some would say they prefer to remain cut off from the larger capitalist world, but most admit that is not plausible in the modern nation-state undergoing the forces of globalization.

Tilling the land in the wet seasons while the cattle are off grazing available land

The Importance of Cattle

More than any other resource available to the Dinka, the simple cow is most highly valued. Besides the cows’ wisdom in making man slave to them, they provide dairy products that the Dinka consider to be the most noble food. In addition, cattle provide fuel and fertilizer in the way of their dried dung, disinfectant from their urine, bedding skins and leather from their hides, trumpets and spoons from their horns, and meat (though only when the cow is already dying). The urine is also utilized to dye hair and as a paste to clean the teeth, and the dung ashes to relieve cattle from blood-sucking ticks. Indeed, there are likely more uses of the cattle the Dinka have found since initial domestication that simply haven’t been recorded. It is much more economical to keep cattle alive than to kill them for meat, especially when they come to signify great wealth and prestige when used for paying bridewealth. The Dinka also herd sheep and goats, though they are quite dispensable in comparison to cattle. Cattle are much more than a simple means of subsistence. They are also the staple in the symbolic order of values, traditions, and beliefs, thereby representing a central thread of Dinka cultural identity. Cattle are so important for the welfare of the Dinka in their traditional way of life and so honored by them that the Dinka often refer to the cow or the bull as the “creator.”

Dinka herders wearing traditional

beaded corsets. The man on the right is

younger, as indicated by the bead color.

Consequences of State Warfare

With the impacts of civil war still largely being felt in southern Sudan despite ongoing peace talks, the Dinka have been struggling to maintain the group cohesion that is so important to their socio-cultural survival. Traditionally, the Dinka have practiced transhumance to make sure they make the most of both the wet and dry seasons, and avoid the dangers of floods and drought. The few towns scattered across Dinkaland have functioned as administrative posts for the Sudan government’s strategic national interests, but these are now being taken over by the united rebel force in the region known as the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLA/M). They have helped to maintain some of these towns as traditional market centers that the Dinka sometimes utilize.

The spread of disease has been accelerated by the war, primarily as a result of chronic food shortages and the sudden conglomeration of massive amounts of once nomadic peoples into squatter settlements receiving aid. With the loss of cattle brought on by forced displacement to certain subgroups of the Dinka culture, there is no easy substitute found. With many Dinka men, and even more boys, taking up arms within the SPLA instead of tending to their cattle, a gradual loss of cultural patterns used in the past to deal with crisis is occurring. Jok Madut Jok adds more about the societal degradation: “As the whole society becomes affected, women are constantly pushed to the bottom. It is thought pastoral economies are the domain of men, but when disaster strikes this economy, women suffer most,” especially with rape from Arab raiding militias. The Dinka are a very proud and self-sustaining people, as I have said, but the current state of war ravaging their homelands has reduced many to complete dependence on foreign aid. Forced displacement of the Dinka as a result of regional competition for scarce resources has deeply impacted the Dinka way of life.

The Dinka, along with other traditional southerners, have been largely marginalized by the Arab Government of Sudan during the course of civil war. The war, which has essentially been going on since independence in 1956, has caused massive displacement (Sudan has the highest number of internally displaced peoples in the world with around 4.5 million) and much suffering among the Dinka. Click this link to see a 2004 map of the IDP (Internally Displaced Peoples) presence in south Sudan. Many have had to ironically seek refuge in the more stable cities of northern Sudan, most of which have settled in slums around the capital of Khartoum and unemployment is rampant. In addition, a number of Dinka orphans, most notably known as the “Lost Boys of Sudan,” have been relocated to the United States to begin a new life after warfare stole away their traditional one. There were few “lost girls” sent over because most have been taken by the Arabs as sex slaves. One lost boy won a University of Washington poetry contest by telling of his suffering.

Large-scale oil production and transport (propagated by large foreign oil companies desperate for new wells to feed growing economies worldwide) have had a significant impact on the landscape and local environment. The GOS in the hopeful peace talks with the South are coming to realize the greater benefit of sharing the wealth with their southern counterparts, and hopefully this will allow the Dinka, behind General John Garang, to keep a healthy measure of self-determination in their lifestyle. One of the major environmental concerns for the Dinka is the possibility of soil and water contamination on the lands they still till.

Due to ongoing war and threat to their livelihood, the Dinka are looking evermore to guns before their cattle to survive

Facing Modernization

Dinkaland today lies in what the World Food Program has designated a “war and insecurity” zone and the geographically separated Ngok Dinka are within the zone of numerous IDPs, as indicated on this 2000 map. In fact, much of the Ngok Dinka have fled warfare in their province to paradoxically find a more secure life in such northern urban centers as Khartoum, the seat of the Arab oppressors disguising the scorched-earth policy they practice with the name of “development.”

The discovery of oil in south Sudan in the 1970s has brought nothing but disaster for the traditional peoples who call this land home. In 1999, the Arab Islamic Government of Sudan completed its major oil pipeline running from the Muglad Basin (just north of Dinkland) to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Since then oil revenues for the government have skyrocketed, while the quality of life of southerners has plunged into a near widespread loss of self-sufficiency. The environmental impact of oil exploration has also emerged as a major source of conflict between the Khartoum government and local communities in the South. Forced dislocation of southern peoples (and the Dinka are at the core of this) has been decimating the fragile economy of such traditional peoples all across the south Sudan region. Since the onslaught of foreign oil demands and thus massive displacement of Dinka populations, the tribe as a whole has been reduced to around 1.7 million and, in some regions, over 80% of the Dinka are displaced. The inverse is true for northern Sudanese urban centers, where many more southerners have been flocking to escape the hell that was once peaceful village life.

The British historically kept the Dinka and their neighboring “backward” tribes of the south Sudan region isolated from the influences of colonialism. This very slow introduction to change from the outside world has made sudden integration into the modern capitalist system very confusing and frowned upon. As the Dinka view themselves as the ideal of dignified man, any foreigner inevitably holds inferior values that are not worth embracing. However, under the auspices of an Islamic Arab government who want desperately to be plugged into the modern capitalist economy, the Dinka’s traditional way of life cannot help but undergo serious changes. While the Dinka have shown that they aren’t completely against integrating some of their people into the modern world, they haven’t been given the chance to make a successful change from sustenance to capital, nor time to make sense of it in light of their own values. Change that does filter into Dinka society is unbalanced so that modernization has not affected all aspects of culture equally. Lacking a centralized authoritarian figure to mitigate the changes equally, small factions of society become more modernized than the masses, disrupting the group cohesion so crucial to keeping society in order. As a result of this, combined with the blatant forced displacement of Dinka peoples, the Dinka are struggling to keep their socio-cultural identity alive.

The Dinka Mindset

The mental calm of the Dinka in the midst of chronic conflict has been an adaptation for survival over their entire history as a self-sustaining people. Conflict is not a new experience to the Dinka but a recurrent theme from which has developed a heritage of the people displaying resilience and survival. Crop failure, epidemic, drought leading to famine and widespread cattle deaths, group displacement, and the violence of sporadic cattle raiding amongst neighboring tribes are all familiar features of rural life in southern Sudan, and long predate the advent of the current conflict. They have only been able to survive such extreme fluctuations through socio-cultural vitality that transcends perceived individual needs and survival strategies made successful with experience in such a hostile environment. To the Dinka, and this is known to every child, their world has been ‘spoiled’ many times before by unwise outsiders, and it has ‘held’ again and again. As Francis Deng of the Ngok Dinka has so soundly put it: “People will die, perhaps in large numbers, but the land will remain, generations will grow, and society will thrive again.” Implicit in this thriving will be the normalization of friendly relations between feuding groups (within the Dinka tribe itself), warring neighbors (primarily the Nuer), and all the pivotal elements of the relevant world, which now includes tribal members in the larger world, such as Francis Deng and NBA player Manute Bol (see right).

Dinka children using a WFP-donated grain

machine. Such immobile Dinka relying on

on aid are losing touch with traditional ways of acquiring food

Manute Bol of the Dinka tribe, who gave all his NBA earnings to help his people back home

Dinka man with a metal pipe and powdered

cow dung rubbed on his body, indicating a

a mix of domestic and foreign influences

References

· Baum, Robert. 1998-2000. “Dinka.” “African Religions: An Interpretation.” Microsoft® Encarta® Africana Third Edition. Microsoft Corporation.

· Burton, John W. 1991. “Development and Cultural Genocide in the Sudan.” The Journal of Modern African Studies (Sept.) 29:3, 511-520.

· Deng, Francis Mading. 1972. The Dinka of the Sudan. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.

· Deng, Francis M. 1971. Tradition and Modernization: A Challenge for Law Among the Dinka of the Sudan. London, England: New Haven Press.

· Deng, Francis M. 1973. The Dinka and Their Songs. London, England: Oxford University Press.

· Deng, Francis M. 2000. “Reaching Out: A Dinka Principle of Conflict Management.” Traditional Cures for Modern Conflicts: African Conflict “Medicine”. I. William Zartman, ed. SAIS African Studies Library, 95-128.

· Griffin, Michael. 1981. “Dinka and their Cattle Defy Time.” The Geographical Magazine 53:12 (1981), 760-765.

· O'Sullivan, Hugh. 1910. “Dinka Laws and Customs.” The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (Jan. – June) 40, 171-191.

· Rackley, Edward B. 2000. “Displacement, Conflict, and Socio-Cultural Survival in Southern Sudan.” Journal of Humanitarian Assistance (June), 1-15.

Note: Much of the information on this page is from the emic perspective of Francis Mading Deng, a Dinka scholar of his own people, who has enabled me, a common foreigner, to gain a legitimate understanding of the Dinka culture and why these people wish to remain largely cut off from the forces of modernization. Unfortunately, most of his books were written in the 60s and 70s and are now quite outdated, but he still disseminates what true Dinka society is all about. Through the eyes and out of the mind of this astute anthropologist, we see and come to realize the life-giving connections the Dinka have kept with their volatile environment and what we can do to help keep that unique bond with the land alive.

Web Resources

A good annotated bibliography for student serious about southern Sudan

Ecological Aspects of the Sudan conflict

Ecological Degradation caused by the Sudanese civil war

How displaced Dinka are faring [1999]

The Dinka’s place in Transmitting Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)

An informed opinion on the future of Dinka society [by Jok Madut Jok]

This webpage was written and compiled by Bryan Whitlock for GEOG 440, Ecology and Culture, Spring 2004 at Central Washington University.

Please send any comments to: whitlocb@cwu.edu