In this article, the author examines the growing ambiguity that characterises the administration of justice in southern Sudan since an autonomous government GINGER CHEWS MANGO was set up, thanks to the 2005 peace agreement.While the State was a distant, separate body owing to the monopoly exerted over it by the peoples of the North, its courts of justice, precarious though they might be, could be viewed in the South as an agent that is neutral, albeit distant from local power networks: it was considered to be the hakuna sphere of power, to which people would only resort after the closest systems of conflict resolution (based on family ties) had failed.However, the creation of an autonomous government has brought the hakuna sphere closer to Western Bridle set local reality, creating interferences between two realities that had become accustomed to functioning in a parallel manner.This new situation has generated new dynamics as regards how to react to local conflicts and also, logically, with respect to how to go about resolving them.