“This kingdom will not be like the kingdom(s) in the era of Gbudue”: On the rebirth of the Azande Kingdom

Abstract

Colonial rule in Sudan altered kingship and ended the kingdom among the Azande and neighboring groups. Yet the ruling clan, the Avongara, and the lineage of the precolonial Azande kings and chiefs continued. A century elapsed before a new institution, the Azande Kingdom, could be reborn with a new monarch at its head. This article draws on ethnographic research and interviews in Yambio, South Sudan, to show that the twenty-first-century Azande Kingdom, established in 2022, is a reinvented monarchy rather than a replica of its nineteenth-century predecessors. It concludes that the institution was formed through the amalgamation of four precolonial kingdoms in an invention that aimed to invoke the unification and traditions of the Azande within the confines of the modern nation-state of South Sudan. Unlike its predecessors, the Azande Kingdom is a modern creation modeled on modern governments with their ministers and departments.