Who are the Nuba People?

Profile

The Nuba are a collective group of peoples who share a common geography, and they live in Sudan’s South Kordofan Province, known as Nuba Mountains—one of the most remote parts of Sudan and are comprised of a rich mosaic of some 99 different ethnicities and speaking more than 100 dialectic languages. They typify the most common features of indigenous peoples to reclaim their land and resources that have been under sustained attack by the Sudanese successive regimes of Muslim Arabic-speaking allies.

The Nuba people reside in the foothills of the Nuba Mountains in central Sudan—one of the most remote and inaccessible places in all of Sudan. Villages consist of family compounds. A family compound consists of a rectangular compound enclosing two round mud huts thatched with sorghum stalks facing each other called a shall. At one time the area was considered a place of refuge, bringing together people of many different tongues and backgrounds who were fleeing oppressive governments and slave traders. They arrived at the area from various directions and in the course of thousands of years. The Nuba Mountains region covers about 30,000 square miles. Population estimates widely but is believed that somewhere between 6.9 to 8 million people live in the Nuba Mountains. Most Nuba people are subsistence farmers, raising vegetables, chickens and livestock. They have a strong work ethic and sense of community. It is common for people to walk many miles to help their neighbors rebuild homes, schools, and roads that have been destroyed by decades of civil war.

Because of the relative isolation of the Nuba Mountains, the region has long served as a refuge for people seeking safe refuge from oppression or slavery. This legacy has taught the Nuba people to live with their diversity, working together for the well-being of everyone, and looking past cultural and religious differences. In the Nuba Mountains, adherents to Christianity, Islam, and indigenous religions intermingle and work together.

Historical context

Nuba migrated to the mountains for protection and improved water sources to cultivate beans, cotton, millet and maize, and to raise cattle, goats and sheep. Their traditional opponents, the cattle herding Sudanese Arabized group known as Baggara, who live in southern Kordofan, often have been allies of central power in Sudan since the nineteenth century, while Nuba were long peripheral to the main currents of Sudanese politics, neither aligned with the Arab-dominated north nor belonging to the south.

The central government intensified its efforts to inflame the Arabized groups to involve in historical competition with the Nuba with the objective of elimination Nuba land of its Nuba inhabitants and replacing them with Arabized groups. In response to these agitations the army arrested, tortured and executed Nuba leaders and confiscated their land, evicting entire communities. In January 1992 the Provincial Governor of Kordofan declared a jihad in the Nuba Mountains to root out the ‘remnants’ of the SPLA. The attempt to destroy the Nuba people and culture, and their forcible conversion to Islam, is not new. Some local authorities prohibited ritual wrestling and stick fighting, which relates to some Nuba peoples’ cosmology and agricultural and religious practices. Prohibition of these rituals implies an indirect obstruction to the basic cultural traits and value systems which maintain and foster Nuba ethnic identity.

The imposition of Sharia law has reinforced discrimination. The government has embarked on the comprehensive call campaign, which aims at Islamizing Nuba via the imposition of Islamic teaching, the intimidation of clergy, resettlement and torture. In reaction to policies from successive central regimes in power, in particular far-reaching land confiscation in 1984, Nuba increasingly aligned with the SPLA.