Azande Kingdom should now embrace modern kingship

Several prominent Azande and non-Azande leaders from Western Equatoria State commemorated the 117th anniversary of the death of the late King Gbudwe yesterday.

King Gbudwe, whose real name was Mbio, which means “a kind of small antelope,”, later renamed himself “Gbudwe”, also known as Gbudue, meaning “to tear out a man’s intestines.”

Since his death in 1905, no successor had been named but on Wednesday, a prince was crowned to take over the Azande kingship to replace Gbudwe. Like in most African Kingdoms, King Gbudwe played a great role in protecting his people from the foreign colonialists.

The historians tell us that in the early 1870s. King Gbudwe fought a vicious civil war with his brothers after the death of their father, and after consolidating his power, he went on to win several battles against the Arabs, French, and British.

Nevertheless, in 1882, the Egyptians with the help of rival Azande captured King Gbudwe and imprisoned him before he was released later by the Mahdists. He died later when he was arrested for the second time. They said he either starved himself to death or was murdered while in custody.

When the colonial leaders took over power in Africa, they abolished the monarchy in most areas to protect their interests. The western colonial powers looked at African Kings as a threat to their mission of colonisation.

They disrupted the political organisation and economic production of the many African political entities and introduced new forms of cultural alienation, invasion, and confusion until the Africans started demanding their independence.

However, the oldest African kingdoms have been despised for bad practices such as early marriages and women’s and girls’ rights abuses. The two elements made most people push for no renewal of the kingship rule because they dreaded that the re-emergence of the Kingdom would derail the achievements made in addressing girl child rights and the abolition of bad forms of cultural practices.

The re-emergence of the Azande Kingdom from the old to the new should be extremely beneficial to the community as a whole. It should help the authorities in their fight against bad practices in society.  Today, early and forced marriages within our communities across South Sudan to remain a major challenge to the government in the promotion of girl child education.

The Azande Kingdom should help the government in advocating for observance of women’s and girls’ rights in the community. It should ensure that bad forms of cultural practises such as the inheritance of women are abolished. Young and beautiful girls were forcibly selected from their parents to serve in the palace as wives to the kings or royal guards in the oldest kingships.

These are some of the bad habits that most kings had in those days, which made many generations despise the kingship rule. We wish the Azande Kingdom would embrace the modern style of kingship.