Urban Now

Front matter

InGbernabtional Relations

in Asia, Africa and the Americas

Politics, Economy, Society -

Preface to the English Edition

My decision to publish the translation of my ethnographic observations in Juba in 2007 and 2008 stems from my wish to introduce my book to English-speaking readers. The first, Polish edition had a very limited reception and is practically unavailable today.

I wrote the book more than a decade ago. This means light years in the modern world. The main character of my monograph - Juba - is today the capital of the independent South Sudan. However, the country is far from stable. In fact, nothing went the way it should have. Suffice it to mention the destructive armed conflict between two feuding dictators: President Salva Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar. This conflict cost the lives of dozens of thousands of people. Over two million people had to flee abroad to survive. Now, the provisions of a fragile agreement from several months ago are in the process of implementation, so it is difficult to foresee what the coming days will look like. The future of South Sudan remains uncertain.

From today’s perspective, the period from the Naivasha Agreement in 2005 until South Sudan proclaimed its independence in 2011 - when the events I described occur — seems to be one of the best periods in the history of South Sudan. Who could have expected that at the time? The transitional period was like a moment of waiting, resembling the calm before the storm, which in the tropics is probably something nearly certain, unavoidable. Unfortunately, reality confirmed those predictions as the entire country — still before separating from the North — found itself in a spiral of local wars and revolts. When I write these words, I do not give in to hopeless fatalism but simply want to emphasise a fact. Today, I consider my take on this fleeting period in the history of Juba — and partially also of all South Sudan - to be the greatest value of my study. This is another reason why I decided to republish the book.

Will the re-edition give my book “a second life?” This is not for me to judge. I do, however, believe that the book has not lost much of its currency. The book shows in quite a broad fashion what Juba was like at a very specific, ephemeral period of its development; suffice it to mention the Customs Market — once of the most important city markets — that was suddenly liquidated by the local authorities in 2009. Therefore, I decided to slightly change the title of my book. The book focuses on the “urban now; suspended somewhere between unfulfilled dreams of post-colonial past and still unaccomplished promises of neoliberal future. Hence why I took the liberty of presenting a slightly outdated

6 Preface to the English Edition convention of ethnographic research in the present tense in my book. I believe that presenting my story in this specific time frame will even better highlight the ethnographic nature of my explorations of Juba, which - I firmly emphasise — are neither fully exhaustive nor objective in terms of space, time, nor the subjectivity of assessment. The “ethnographic present” seemed to me important for one more reason. The image of the city I created in the monograph must suffice, unfortunately. It may be valid (“present”) since the political situation disallows any subsequent one... This image must suffice — sadly — since the political situation still prevents a repeated, in-depth examination of this dynamically developing African city, against the all the odds. As long as this gap exists, my book may be exceptionally important from the viewpoint of science, but also ordinary knowledge about the world, as an independent contribution to a more detailed presentation of the history and culture of South Sudan, although originally designed as an element of an ethnographic description of urbanisation processes.

From the perspective of time, I believe that my research in Juba should have “never” succeeded. At the very beginning, when drafting an outline of my plans for field research in Juba, I demonstrated exceptional naivety. I adopted a thesis that having learned some of the realities of North Sudan, I would easily manage to conduct my research in the South. This was a serious mistake as I really did not know much about the region. I refer here not to anthropological or historical knowledge but the knowledge of current nuances at the interface of politics and culture. Unlike most foreigners travelling to Juba via Nairobi or Kampala, I decided to travel via Khartoum. This was a much more difficult and time-consuming project. I had no contacts on site, no starting points. No organisation or friend waited for me in Juba. I left the plane with an address of a hotel that no longer existed... Thus, my mental image of the first days in the city clearly demonstrated my “recklessness,” which caused a lot of unexpected difficulties. Putting it bluntly, this all could have ended for me as a disaster. However, by a stroke of good luck, I managed to start my research and return to the city twice. Being an outsider to foreigners who stayed in Juba at that time added originality to my work. Finally, my case proves that sometimes “recklessness” pays off. It is thanks to that very recklessness that we may conduct projects otherwise unfeasible. After all, some plans can be pursed only by those who do not know that they are unachievable.

Compared to the first edition, published in 2012, I deleted chapters devoted to anthropological research into the African city of Juba and the history of urbanisation in Africa. These topics are well-known and much better elaborated than in my monograph. I updated the chapter on borderlands and African borders, and

Preface to the English Edition 7

I added additional small passages in the chapter devoted to spatial structures, which includes my reflections after the publication of the first edition.

This publication is financed by the Minister of Science and Higher Education within the the National Programme for the Development of Humanities (NPRH) in years 2018-2020, project number 21H 17 024685. I thank the Peter Lang Publishing House for appreciating my work and republishing it. I also express special gratitude to Mr. Krzysztof Zarzycki, who assumed the complicated task of translating the text. For obvious reasons, his contribution to work on this edition was most important. I thank him for reliable, accurate, and creative contribution, respect for the “anthropological spirit” of the text, and for all discussions about the value of words.

Maciej Kurcz

Summer 2019

For Hanna, Leon, Roch and Beata

Contents

Juba on the Political and Cultural Borderland: African

DOSY ANS sa ol W O GA Eda 29 South Sudan's Borderlands uses wdw O CA ana 38

Juba: A City that Attracts Migrants 2000. eecssesssnnneeeeesee 53 Migration to the City nasisa iirin in a AG GARE OLO 53