Paper long abstract:

This paper will discuss the historical meaning of the Sudan-Uganda boundary west of the Nile, building on analyses of boundaries as conduits rather than barriers, but also exploring the ambivalences of cross-border relations. Trade and labour exchanges have generated associated occult exchanges in the form of poison and extractive supernatural forces, while violent conflicts (including civilian killing, mutilation and abduction) have created a frying pan or fire situation for cross-border refugees. The tensions of borderland identities and exchanges have thus been inscribed both visibly and invisibly on the people of South-Central Equatoria, and continue to be debated as cross-border trade has increased since the 2005 Sudanese peace agreement and the LRA ceasefire. Recent complaints by Ugandan traders about their treatment in Southern Sudanese towns have led to vocalisations of brotherhood and unity by Southern Sudanese leaders (as in this paper’s title). Within Southern Sudan itself, however, communal tensions sometimes associate Equatorians and Ugandans economically and culturally, in opposition to ‘Nilotic’ Sudanese, and this also touches on issues of who fought or fled during the Sudanese wars. National identities are thus shaped by their borderlands and cross-border identities, exchanges and migrations.