Anuak History – In Memory of the Anuak 2003 Genocide in Neo-Nazi ‘Ethiopia’

Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

On the 4th anniversary of the Anuak Genocide, we dedicated four articles to the Anuak people, a great African Nation who still remains imprisoned within the borders of tyrannical Abyssinia – fallaciously re-baptized Ethiopia. We mention here the titles, adding the corresponding links to the articles (1. Christian Anuak Massacred by Neo-Nazi, Pseudo-Christian ‘Ethiopians’ / 2. African Christianity under Attack: the Anuak Genocide / 3. The Neo-Nazi Policies of ‘Ethiopia’, the Anti-Christian Country Par Excellence / 4. Anuak Leader Obang Metho’s Open Letter to U.S. Senate on Racist ‘Ethiopia’).

With the present article, we complete a first circle of reference to the tyrannized Nation of Anuak who still today face an unprecedented set of racist Abyssinian (Amhara and Tigray) policies targeting their very existence. Contrarily with the previous articles that all evolved around the 2003 Anuak Genocide, we will republish here an excellent contribution by a great Africanist scholar, Professor Emeritus Robert O. Collins on the History of Anuak; it consists in parts of Prof. Collins’ books "Land Beyond the Rivers: The Southern Sudan, 1898-1918" (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1971, pp. 53, 57) and "Shadows in the Grass: Britain in the Southern Sudan, 1918-1956" (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983, Chapter Nine," Thunder in the Highlands," pp. 365-405). The texts were first published (http://www.anuakjustice.org/doc_history_to_1956.htm) in the Anuak Justice Council website under the title ‘History of the Anuak to 1956’. We inserted subtitles in the long but very enlightening text that reveals some of the most appalling pages of Colonialism in Africa.

History of the Anuak to 1956 by Professor Emeritus Robert O. Collins

The Anuak are a Luo-speaking people of the Eastern Sudanic language family that includes the Western Nilotic Luo in the Bahr al-Ghazal and the Luo of Kenya and the Maasai of Tanzania. The original homeland of the Luo appears to have been the Gezira, the "island" of fertile land between the Blue and White Niles south of Khartoum. When the Luo began to move southward from the Gezira remains unclear. Historical linguistic infers that these migrations took place sometime in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, but long before the Dinka followed the Luo into the southern Sudan. The numbers of Luo were small and the pace of their migration must be measured in generations not decades. The reasons for their wanderings are not explicit but can be confirmed with some confidence by acts of man and nature—rebellious sons seeking their independence from their father; fraternal disputes among brothers, which are characteristic of Luo society; droughts, which were frequent, drove the Luo in search of new grass; the eternal search for greener pastures; and pressure from the Ja‘aliyyin Arabs making their way from upper Egypt to the Blue Nile.

By the fourteenth century oral traditions firmly place the Luo in the vicinity of Rumbek in the Bahr al-Ghazal. In the fifteenth century the Luo began to move again, more rapidly than the glacial speed of past centuries. Small clusters of Luo clans wandered north from Rumbek. This group in turn experienced further defections during the northward march. The Bor made their way west to the ironstone plateau south of Wau. Another group led by Gilo also disengaged themselves from the main body, migrating north and east to the Sobat River, where some remained, the main body continuing upstream to settle at the base of the Ethiopian escarpment in the valleys of the Baro, Pibor, and Akobo rivers. They are known today as the Anuak. Some eight or ten generations ago, in the seventeenth century, a splinter group moved south from Anuakland to Lafon Hill where they were called the Pari, while a second clan, the Pajook penetrated further south into Acholi territory in northern Uganda.