CULTURAL: Presidents Museveni and Salva Kiir jump over carcasses of white bulls

By George Laghu

As the newspapers were splashed with photographs of President Yoweri

Museveni and Salva Kiir, the vice-president of Sudan jumping over the carcass of a white bull, members of the Dinka community in Kampala have allayed fears that the ritual is satanic.

Peter Deng, a Dinka elder living in Rubaga, Kampala, says the ceremony, known as Kweng, is a ritual undertaken by everybody who visits the Dinka home as a friend.

“We Dinkas believe in blood as the source of life and white as the colour of peace,” said Deng.

“When a white bull, which represents peace, is slaughtered as the ultimate offering, it is believed that its blood which is life, mingles with that of the ancestors to prove the pledge of those jumping over the slaughtered animal as genuine peaceful people.

“If the persons involved are not honest, then the wrath of God shall turn against them,” he said.

Catherine Nyibol, a Dinka and business woman at Arua Park, says the Kweng ceremony is rooted in the Mnget Morin (child-naming) ceremony at which animal blood is let through the door to signify the peaceful entry of the new born.

“Garang was not a stone sculpture but a human being. It is worth it when his living colleagues peacefully visit him. This is symbolised by the white colour and blood for life,” said Nyibol.

The ceremony, the elders said, implores on the same God in the Bible.

According to Dr Dominique Candia, a Ugandan working with Marleine, a European-based non-governmental organisation (NGO), the bull-jumping ritual is undertaken by almost all NGOs in Sudan’s Upper Nile region where the Dinkas are the majority.

“In return at the ceremony, the elders also bless the NGO to peacefully and successfully achieve its goals.

Garang belonged to the Dinka tribe, one of the largest ethnic groups in southern Sudan.