The Nilotic People and the Road to Independence: South Sudan’s Independence Day

Jul 08, 2021 09:36AM ● By Oga Africa

(A South Sudanese woman in Bor, South Sudan. Image by halim969 via Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/enoughproject/5266482400 )

Happy Independence Day, South Sudan! Today in 2011, South Sudan gained independence from Sudan. To commemorate this Northeast African country, we are exploring the impact of the Nilotic people on the nation’s journey to independence, and citizen’s current realities.

South Sudan is the youngest country in Africa, and more than 85% of South Sudanese people belong to the Nilotic group. The Nilotic people are agro-pastoralist communities who can be found in South Sudan, Suda, Uganda, Ethiopia, Tanzania, DR Congo, and Rwanda. Of the six linguistic families of Africa, this group belongs to the Nilo-Saharan family. In South Sudan, most Nilotic people are Christian or traditionalists and predominately live near the top of the Nile River.

Also known as Nilots, these people are known for being one of the tallest and the thinnest in the world. Nilotic men are an average of 6.4 feet tall and women are an average of 6 feet tall. For most of the Nilotic tribes, cows play a huge role in milk production and marriage dowries and are a great symbol of status and wealth. Education and height have an impact on a woman's dowry. In their society, a tall and educated woman may receive a dowry of 500 cows before getting married.

(Dinka cattle of South Sudan. Ranjit Bhaskar, via Al Jazeera English., CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons )

Religious conformity is an ongoing issue in many parts of the world, including South Sudan. During the Second Sudanese war, which eventually led to South Sudan forming its own country, the people of southern Sudan fought the Sudanese government to maintain religious freedom.

The Second Sudanese War, which lasted for 22 years, began in 1986, when the Sudanese government attempted to incorporate Sharia Law into the whole of the country, imposing Islamic ideologies on non-Muslim communities, including the Dinka people. During the war, the Dinka and Nuer people, both sub-groups of the Nilotic classifications, warred with each other. By the time the war ended, it had claimed the lives of over 2 million people. This war was an extension of the First Sudanese War, which raged from 1955 to 1972.

After South Sudan formed, it entered another war when the South Sudanese president, Salva Kiir Mayardt, fired a politician. The South Sudanese War, which lasted from 2013 to 2015, displaced over 2.2 million people and claimed the lives of thousands.