This paper discusses the phenomenon of mani, a spiritual healing movement which has recently been known for mobilizing young men for war in South Sudan, but which has historical roots in North-east DRC as well. It was one of the “closed associations for collective magic” described by Evans-Pritchard among the Azande in the 1920s, which were regarded as a threat to the political order by Azande chiefs and the British colonial government. On the Congolese side of the border the attitude of the colonial government was similar, though there mani specialists were adopted at the Azande chief’s courts in support of their power, probably in a more covert way, but also spread among commoners. This paper discusses the different manifestations of mani throughout history in this border region and how spiritually-informed debates on politics and legitimacy of rule take place at the heart of its activities. The activities of mani centering on the felt need for collective healing and insurgency as the basis for moral community ever modulating between critiques of or remedies for bad leadership, or as a ritual specialism chiefs seek to harness in support of their leadership. Mani can be compared to what Janzen called collective therapies which played a role in the political history of Bantu-speakers in Central and South Africa, which manifested themselves as ritual specialisms in dualities of power with chiefs, but also as therapeutic insurgencies. Mani played and continues to play a similar role in the wider region not only among Bantu speakers but also Sudanic and Nilotic-speaking people like the Nuer, where the mani prophetess Nyachol mobilized young man for warfare in recent times, calling for a spiritual dimension in politics doing away with the ritual pollution of warfare in order to heal South Sudanese society.