The study, conducted by Isao Murahashi of the University of Shizuoka, investigates two recent cases of regicide among the Lopit people, an Eastern Nilotic agro-pastoral community of roughly 70,000 to 100,000 people living in fortified mountain villages across Eastern Equatoria state. For the Lopit, rain is the central symbol connecting local religion and politics. Rain chiefs, believed to control weather within and during their reign, are responsible for ensuring rainfall according to the agricultural calendar, which is essential for community wellbeing and livestock health. They also serve as intermediaries between humans and the divine, helping people maintain and restore relationships with the gods. But in this region of highly variable weather, rain represents both authority and risk — and drought exposes not only the fragility of crops but the underlying social tensions within the community itself.

South Sudan has been regarded as one of the African countries most severely affected by climate change. According to a World Bank report, the country is among the most climate-vulnerable in the world, with climate-related extreme events allegedly exacerbating local conflict dynamics, displacing communities, eroding livelihoods, and intensifying competition over dwindling resources. Since 2019, when a historic flood hit South Sudan following the sudden rise in water levels of Lake Victoria, flooding has occurred almost every year in the Sudd wetlands along the Nile River basin. In 2024, catastrophic flooding affected almost half of the country’s counties, impacting 735,000 and displacing 65,000 people. Rainfall has declined by 10 to 20 per cent since the mid-1970s, and observed warming of more than 1 degree Celsius is equivalent to another 10 to 20 per cent reduction in rainfall for crops. Patterns in which floods and droughts occur in the same season have become widespread.

Yet this dominant climate-change discourse, shaped by the perspectives of officials and NGOs who observe the crisis from outside affected communities, has largely overlooked the narratives of the people actually living with these impacts. Murahashi’s research, based on remote fieldwork among Lopit refugees in Kenya’s Kakuma Refugee Camp between 2023 and 2025, together with telephone and social media verification with villagers in South Sudan in early 2026, reveals that local people do not immediately associate drought with climate change. When asked how climate change might impact rainfall, most interlocutors showed little interest or were reluctant to link recent regicide cases to global warming. Almost all had some knowledge of the rainstones used in rainmaking rituals and did not deny their instrumental efficacy.

Among the Lopit, natural phenomena like rainfall, thunder, and drought have long been understood from a religious perspective. Drought is not merely viewed as a natural disaster but interpreted as a social event caused by social and moral problems such as the violation of taboos and misconduct by specific individuals. The Lopit believe that a power in nature known as jiok controls the natural environment including rainfall, not humans. The word jiok carries various connotations — most commonly ‘god’, but also a force that brings disaster. Among the kingship communities of the hills and mountains zone, masters have the ability to control divine power and bear responsibility for ensuring the wellbeing and security of the community. In every Lopit village, two important customary chiefs exist: the habu lahai, literally ‘King of the Rain’, and the habu lafof, ‘King of the Soil/Land’. The rain chief has power over rain and takes responsibility for pests and diseases affecting crops, while the chief of land defends the community against enemies and wards off wild animals.

Rainstones, called hai in the Lopit language, are the most important objects used in rainmaking rituals. Only three individuals are allowed to touch and keep them: the rain chief, his wife, and his assistant. A belief exists that if an ordinary person touches the rainstones, misfortune such as blindness or sterility would befall their entire family. The rainstones appear transparent or white, probably quartz or crystals, and are kept within a shrine called a hiduri built beside the rain chief’s house, carefully stored within a clay rain-pot filled with water alongside calabash, spears, grains of sorghum and millet, and tobacco. Rain chiefs do not openly perform rainmaking rituals in public; most procedures are conducted in secret. The rain chief can not only call rain but can also halt it — sometimes combining white cigarette smoke with white ostrich feathers, or smearing red soil on a spearhead so that the clouds above disperse.

The first case examined in detail occurred in July 2021 in Mura-Lopit village, where a 43-year-old rain chief named Hobon was buried alive. Hobon had become rain chief in 2005 and worked effectively with the community for years, bringing rain and food to Mura. But the drought of 2021 caused friction. When the rains failed to arrive in April, the monyomiji — the ruling age-generation that functions as community police and council — asked Hobon why no rainfall had occurred. Hobon replied that a certain person in the village had not repaid a past debt to him, so the person must pay with livestock. The debt was paid with cattle, and the monyomiji presented Hobon with four bulls and five goats. Still no rain came. Hobon suggested a young man had committed adultery with his daughter and that compensation was needed. That, too, was paid. When rainfall continued to fail, the monyomiji discovered that two of the thirteen rainstones and several spears were missing from the hiduri, and people suspected Hobon had intentionally stopped the rain in his village.

Hobon was summoned to an emergency meeting called hiwaha, heralded by beating a large drum. Asked why he had not brought rain, he replied that the monyomiji should hand over his wife as a tribute if people wanted rainfall — a demand that puzzled them. After Hobon attempted to escape to a village on the western side of the Lopit Mountains, he was captured and returned. On 1 July, he was seized in the evening and bound with a rope beside a huge fire throughout the night. The following morning, he was interrogated about the missing rainstones but disclosed nothing. Hobon declared that he was not prepared to work with the Idumele generation because he was a rain chief under the Tome generation, and would only listen to the Tome monyomiji. This statement angered the Idumele monyomiji, who then decided to bury him alive. Hobon was led outside the settlement and instructed to enter a ditch formed by soil erosion near a stream. As he entered, large stones and soil were placed over his body. On 3 July, to the astonishment of the people, heavy rain began to fall and continued for several days.

The second case, in October 2024, involved Oture, the approximately 50-year-old rain chief of Lohobohobo village, who was buried alive after a quarrel with a wealthy and influential opinion leader known as the nyakangan. Notably, the village had rainfall in October when Oture was buried, and some crops had reached a harvestable state — meaning drought or hunger were unlikely to have been the direct causes of his killing. The Lopit believe that if blood is shed during a dispute within the village, misfortune such as crop failure will befall the community. When Oture threw the nyakangan to the ground during a wrestling match, causing him to bleed, rumours spread among the monyomiji that Oture was trying to stop the rain. One informant expressed concern over the waning trust in rain chiefs among villagers, stating that ‘once upon a time, all villagers showed respect to the rain chief, and whenever they performed rain rituals, rain would surely fall. However, in recent times, more people have begun to doubt the power of rain chiefs, and people no longer show the respect they once did.’ The loss of mutual trust was perceived as moral decay.

Murahashi contends that the straightforward link between drought and climate change requires reconsideration. Climate change, which can only be demonstrated through numerical data and charts, should be distinguished from weather variability experienced and interpreted by people within what anthropologists call rain complexes. Unless clear evidence demonstrates that climate change is directly linked to weather variability in the study region, regicides should not be attributed to climate change. Instead, local communities tend to favour a form of ‘self-blame’, attributing responsibility to their own actions or those of specific members of the community — a strategy that allows people to maintain agency rather than passive victimhood in a changing environment. The research also highlights the significant risks faced by rain chiefs, whose rainmaking rituals are certain to fail at some point given the unpredictable local climate, making their sacrifice almost inevitable. In both villages studied, succession has become a practical issue: in Mura-Lopit, the new rain chief fled with the rainstones and has not returned for several years, while in Lohobohobo, no successor has been chosen a year after the rain chief’s death. No one has ever been arrested for these crimes, as the monyomiji prevent government intervention in their custom. The study suggests that instead of attributing regicide solely to climate change, it is necessary to examine the social background and root causes, recognise the risks faced by rain chiefs, and establish counselling services to support individuals held responsible for rainfall.

Subject of Research: Anthropology of climate change and rainmaking in South Sudan

Article Title: Rainmaking and climate change: global discourse and local perspectives over regicide in South Sudan

Article References: Murahashi, I. (2026). Rainmaking and climate change: global discourse and local perspectives over regicide in South Sudan. Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice, 16, Article 15944. https://doi.org/10.3389/past.2026.15944

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/past.2026.15944

Keywords: South Sudan, rain chiefs, climate change, regicide, Lopit, drought, anthropology, rainmaking, climate, change, global, discourse