Rift Valley Institute

This show is brought to you under the South Sudan National Archives Project, supported by Norway and implemented by UNESCO in partnership with RVI, and in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports. The second show of Tarikh Tan’na (Our History) series will focus on “Justice: for who and by who?” We will take the Torit District court books for 1957 and 1959 found in the South Sudan National Archives, as the starting point for our discussion. Court book By the 1930s, the Southern Sudanese Native Administration system (idara ahliya) was becoming bureaucratic and organised. Government outposts evolved into small towns and provided administrative centres for the hierarchy of courts established under the 1931 Chiefs’ Courts Ordinance. The court book for Torit C Court was one of many court books that recorded the outcomes of cases since the 1930s. These records were short and focused. They included the name, home village, and clan of the convicted person, brief details of the case, and the fin