Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Glossary
- General introduction
- Part One FROM ZARIBA TO MERKAZ: THE CREATION OF THE NODAL STATE FRONTIER, c. 1840–1920
- Part Two FROM MAKAMA TO MEJLIS: THE MAKING OF CHIEFSHIP AND THE LOCAL STATE, 1920s–1950s
- Part Three FROM MALAKIYA TO MEDINA: THE FLUCTUATING EXPANSION OF THE URBAN FRONTIER, c. 1956–2010
- 7 Trading knowledge: chiefship, local elites and the urban frontier, c. 1956–2010
- 8 Regulating depredation: chiefs and the military, 1963–2005
- 9 Reprising ‘tradition’: the mutual production of community and state in the twenty-first century
- 10 Knowing the system: judicial pluralism and discursive legalism in the interim period, 2005–2010
- Conclusion
- Interviews
- Bibliography
- Index
- Eastern African Studiues
8 - Regulating depredation: chiefs and the military, 1963–2005
from Part Three - FROM MALAKIYA TO MEDINA: THE FLUCTUATING EXPANSION OF THE URBAN FRONTIER, c. 1956–2010
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2013
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Glossary
- General introduction
- Part One FROM ZARIBA TO MERKAZ: THE CREATION OF THE NODAL STATE FRONTIER, c. 1840–1920
- Part Two FROM MAKAMA TO MEJLIS: THE MAKING OF CHIEFSHIP AND THE LOCAL STATE, 1920s–1950s
- Part Three FROM MALAKIYA TO MEDINA: THE FLUCTUATING EXPANSION OF THE URBAN FRONTIER, c. 1956–2010
- 7 Trading knowledge: chiefship, local elites and the urban frontier, c. 1956–2010
- 8 Regulating depredation: chiefs and the military, 1963–2005
- 9 Reprising ‘tradition’: the mutual production of community and state in the twenty-first century
- 10 Knowing the system: judicial pluralism and discursive legalism in the interim period, 2005–2010
- Conclusion
- Interviews
- Bibliography
- Index
- Eastern African Studiues
Summary
Chiefs are like the door to a chicken house: without it the chickens would not be safe.
During periods of civil war, the urban frontier dramatically constricted around the government garrisons, and its inhabitants found themselves caught between two antagonistic ‘hakumas’, the rebel government in the ‘bush’ and the government in the town. Both bush and town were ambiguous moral spaces, and the chiefs and their communities wrestled with how to gain protection from or in them, during both the first and second periods of war. The communities that had crystallised by the late-colonial period in the vicinity of the towns were frequently divided and scattered to different locations. The institution of chiefship had to be similarly mobile and capable of temporary splitting; yet in the process it became ever more entrenched in the political and social architecture, so that people could rarely imagine their world without chiefs. Yet chiefs in certain times and places are seen to have acted variously as agents and informants of brutal security forces, as executors of military requisitioning and conscription, as easily-bribed collaborators, as corrupt beneficiaries of commercial, development and relief projects, or as feeble victims of military power. Chiefs were killed by rebel forces, removed by their communities and imposed by governments. Chiefdoms became fragmented into ever smaller units, as the next chapter will discuss.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Dealing with Government in South SudanHistories of Chiefship, Community and State, pp. 165 - 180Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013