The Rizeigat—Malual Borderland during the Condominium: The Limits of Legibility

Abstract

This chapter discusses the borderland between Southern Darfur and Northern Bahr el-Ghazal under Anglo-Egyptian (de facto British colonial) administration. This borderland has since 2011 become the site of a (heavily disputed) international boundary, but during the Condominium and until the independence of South Sudan it was a dividing line between provinces of northern and southern Sudan, which was also imagined by state officials as a “tribal”—and indeed racial—boundary between pastoralist Rizeigat Baqqara (Arabs) and Malual Dinka (non-Arabs). The boundary became especially significant with the colonial government’s introduction of the “Southern Policy” in 1930, often interpreted by colonial officials and historians as an attempt to restrict contact between what was imagined to be the Arab, Islamic north of Sudan and the non-Arab, non-Islamic south. But contact between the two peoples, despite the strictures of the Southern Policy, was inevitable, as the border was close to the river called Bahr el-Arab (in Arabic) or the Kür (in Dinka), which, together with the land and waterways around it, was a crucial grazing and watering resource for both these cattle-keeping peoples. Managing the resultant overlapping patterns of resource use was a key challenge for the Darfur and Bahr el-Ghazal administrations.