Gbudwe

Gbudwe was the Azande King in South Sudan in 1870 - 1905.

His real name was Mbio, which means "a kind of small antelope", but he renamed himself "Gbudwe", also known as Gbudue, meaning "to tear out a man's intestines".

Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard quotes a description of King Gbudwe of the Azande:

"King Gbudwe was a short man, though not excessively short... he was stout also... His breasts protruded like those of a woman... His eyes were little protruding eyes, and they sparkled like stars. When he looked at a man in anger they were terrible; then they went grey like ashes... When he approached people from afar you could not mistake King Gbudwe. He was a marvelous prince."

He was unusual among Azande kings in preferring to lead from the front, and as a young man he often took part in the fighting in person. He possessed a magic whistle, which was said to guarantee victory if blown before a battle. He encouraged his men to eat the Arabs they killed, although cannibalism was probably not normal Azande practice, and is recorded as having derived great amusement from a present consisting of a bag filled with the severed genitals of his enemies.

King Gbudwe hated and despised both Egyptian Arabs and whites, dismissing them all in a memorable phrase as "dirty little crop-headed barbarians". In the early 1870s he 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 the British.

In 1882, after one disastrously unsuccessful attempt, an official expedition was sent against him by the Egyptian authorities in Bahr el Ghazal Province, whose governor at the time was the Englishman Lupton Bey. The Egyptians with the help of rival Azande captured King Gbudwe and imprisoned him.

In the following year the Mahdists overran the Sudan, and they decided to release him. King Gbudwe then went home and supervised the extermination of all the Arabs who were left in his country (Zandeland). One of Evans-Pritchard's informants summarises his subsequent relations with his fellow Azande:

"When he heard it said of a prince that he had many followers he made war against him, and he set one of his sons in his place to reside there and to rule over all who used to be his subjects. Thus Gbudwe prospered and became a great king, for he made war against any prince who opposed him. He only was a great king and continued as such. Gbudwe was a powerful and a daring man, for he overcame all princes, and for him alone they became meek. After he had overcome them all he rested in peace; and he distributed provinces to all his sons, and he left it to them to make war against many peoples."

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