arabization - Blogs - TheBlackList Pub2024-03-28T17:28:04Zhttps://www.theblacklist.net/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/arabizationInternational Dialogue on State-building and National Development in South Sudanhttps://www.theblacklist.net/profiles/blogs/south-sudan-international-dialogue-on-state-building-and-national2011-09-26T22:00:00.000Z2011-09-26T22:00:00.000ZTheBlackListhttps://www.theblacklist.net/members/TheBlackList<div><p> </p>
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<div style="text-align:center;"><i>International Dialogue on State-building and National Development in South Sudan</i></div>
<div style="text-align:center;"><i>Convened by the African Research and Resources Forum (ARRF) and the Centre for Peace and Development Studies (CPDS) at the University of Juba, Juba, South Sudan<br /><b><br /></b> September 23- 23, 2011</i></div>
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<div><b>Foreign policy options for the Government of South Sudan post self-government.</b></div>
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<div align="center"><b>ABSTRACT</b></div>
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<div>There is a tendency in Sudan studies especially in the South, to see issues exclusively from the internal perspective, which is understandable, given the history of South Sudan and its geo-political location.</div>
<div>The paper finds it’s rational in the existence of the new state of Southern Sudan since 9 July 2011. Going back into the history, it was noted that the report of African Union (AU) High Level Panel for Darfur, set up in 2009, was the first report of the continentalist body to acknowledge the Sudan as an African issue, declaring Sudan a ‘bridge between north Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa’. Southern Sudan joins the global African community as a state entity.</div>
<div>Apparently Article 2.9 of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement CPA) should explain the fact that to date the South under GoSS has yet to articulate a firm position as to where it fits in Africa and the global African community. This we note from the absence of policy pronouncements, as regards the past history of the area occupied by South Sudan and Sudan in north east Africa. The Kush Institution established in 2008 in Juba was to handle this lacuna.</div>
<div>For informed Africans located elsewhere than in north east Africa this lack of clarity creates a vacuum of expectations. Perceptions based on field studies and analysis would indicate that the centre of gravity in the unity movement of the Africans globally, is shifting away from continental to sub-Saharan considerations. The Founding Fathers of the OAU did not incorporate the fractious relations in the Afro-Arab borderlands in the Sahel in their calculations, in their composition of their African nation. Rather they based their calculations on geographic identity. This amounted to a denial of history, as the experience of South Sudan, Darfur , Southern Kordofan, Blue Nile and Nubia attest.</div>
<div>Apparently it will take time for Africans to come to terms with what happened in South Sudan. Silence on the issue will delay this process. It will not stop it. The consequent impact of the South Sudan experience on the unity movement will have profound implications/applications for Africans in general and this will be a two way process, affecting also the South. History to date has made it such that the majority of Africans are ignorant of the realities of events in north east Africa. The paper considers for how long such a policy can be sustained and the various ramifications.</div>
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<div><span><b><span>Background considerations</span></b></span></div>
<div>The institution of slavery is a matter on which information is either suppressed or not available. Both Arabs and Africans are reluctant, unwilling or unable to bring the facts to the common knowledge of the two peoples, either by way of curriculum reform or academic research. The approach has been (Laya 2005) to not raise questions of legitimacy of the state, and in the name of ‘national unity’ reference to slavery is prohibited . Laya affirms that in the spirit of the African Renaissance it would be best to not ignore the unhappy period of slavery. In his view, historically, there was a close relationship between the trans-Atlantic and the trans-Saharan slave trades.</div>
<div>Ancient Kush, located in present day northern Sudan was strongly influenced by Egypt for some 1000 years beginning in 2700 BC. Subsequently Egypt’s power in Sudan waned. In the sixteenth century Muslim religious brotherhoods spread through northern Nubia. These plus the Ottoman Empire, ruled the area through military leaders for some three centuries. In 1820 Muhammad Ali, who ruled Egypt on behalf of the Ottomans, sent 4000 troops to Sudan. This invasion resulted in the Ottoman-Egyptian rule of Sudan from 1821 to 1885. Slavery in the Sudan took hold during this priod,when it was made state policy. Slavery became a cash commodity when the Europeans started making incursions into the continent to procure slaves. In the western reference and Sudanese context, mulatto means white, Jallaba, means of mixed race from the North of the Sudan. The Jallaba were the procurers of slaves who led raiding squads backed by formidable armies. As Egyptian rule faltered, the Jallaba hoped to inherit governance of the Sudan. The late Dr John Garang de Mabior (2008) refers to the Jallaba as <i>Afrabians</i>, a hybrid of different races and nationalities, including black Africans, immigrant Arabs, Turks, Greeks and Armenians, that first evolved during the 15<sup>th</sup> century and have since always chosen to identify themselves as Arabs, even though many are black. Hashim states that the political Right, descendants of the Jallaba, has ruled the Sudan since self-government in 1955. While the Sudan might have been expected to join Africa, it chose to join Arabia as a second-class member. When the northern elite was installed in power in Khartoum by the departing Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, they considered the Sudan as consisting of their fellow noble Arabs of the centre North area; the Muslim Africans of the periphery (with possible Arab blood) undergoing rapid Arabisation; and the slaves, being blacks with no authority to rule.</div>
<div>Looking at the socio-cultural structure of Sudanese society, Hashim (unpublished paper) refers to the development of a new ideological consciousness of race labelled ‘Arabised Sudanese’. Skin colour came to distinguish racial differentiation. So that in the Sudanese context a light-brown person was an Arab and a black African was seen as a slave. The stigma of slavery and blackness meant marginalisation and the prestigma represented the non-blacks, the Arabs who were at the centre. This type of alienation has been in place in the Sudan for over five centuries and continues until today. In the Middle-East the Sudanese Arab is considered too dark and is treated as a second class Arab. The blacks of the Sudan, who have completely assimilated Islamo–Arab culture and religion (such as the Darfuri) are discriminated against by the Arabised mulattos of the centre of the Sudan, and are seen as slaves, too African and thus worthy of being dehumanised by genocide.</div>
<div>In a paper on the impasse of post-colonial relations, Simone (2005) refers to the legacy of Afro-Arab slavery as having distorted the relations between two major nationalities in our world, the African and the Arab. This, he explains, is because the descendants of the slavers have never publicly condemned or even admitted the abuses of the past to the descendants of those who were abducted and whose lands were raided. This is a major factor in explaining why slavery continues today. Despite the adoption of the Arab Charter on Human Rights by the Arab League in September 1994, slavery abides. In December 2005, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) adopted a Ten-Year Program of Action, promoting issues such as tolerance, moderation and human rights. This has not affected the lives of the people living in Islamic states such as the Sudan and Mauritania. The issue of slavery cannot be divorced from that of reparations and restitution, as stated in the Declaration of the Conference on Arab-Led slavery of Africans, held Johannesburg on 22 February 2003 (CASAS Book Series No. 35, Cape Town). </div>
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<p><span style="color:#ff0000;" class="font-size-4"><strong><a target="_blank" href="http://theblacklistconcerns.blogspot.com/2011/09/international-dialogue-on-state.html">Continues:</a></strong></span></p>
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<p><span style="color:#ff0000;" class="font-size-4"><strong><br /></strong></span></p>
<p> </p></div>Constitutionalism, The National Question and the Sudanese Civil Warhttps://www.theblacklist.net/profiles/blogs/constitutionalism-the-national2010-12-10T19:14:04.000Z2010-12-10T19:14:04.000ZKWASI Akyeamponghttps://www.theblacklist.net/members/KWASIAkyeampong<div><p><u>By K.K. Prah:</u></p>
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<p><b><i>From ?Government and Politics in Africa ? A Reader?</i></b></p>
<p><b><i>Edited by O. Nnoli, published by AAPS Books, Harare, Zimbabwe, in 2000</i></b></p>
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<p>An armed struggle has been fought intermittently in the Sudan since August 1955. In Africa its only rival in duration is the Eritrean armed resistance which commenced in September 1961. The early beginnings of the African nationalist insurgency in the Sudan can be traced to the Torit Mutiny August 18, 1955, when members of the equatorial corps garrisoned in Torit revolted against the military authority of the ending Anglo-Egyptian condominium, then officered by Arabist Sudanese. This happened within months of the transfer of state power from the condominium administration into Sudanese hands on January 1, 1956.</p>
<p>After the collapse of the mutiny, armed resistance emerged at various points in the South. Rebel units under Latada and Paul Ali Ghatala operated as separate insurgency groups on both banks of the Nile. Until the early 1980s Paul Ali Ghatala?s unit operated in Western Equatoria. However by 1959, the initial force of the armed resistance had been spent. The fires of armed rebellion seriously rose again in 1963 with the mergence of Anya Nya under the leadership of SANU (Sudan African National Union). Through various turbulent stages of evolution, the war was brought to a major lull by the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972. Where most of the African nationalist insurgents led by Joseph Lagu agreed to the peace of Addis Ababa, some elements under Gordon Mourtat Mayne, Paul Ali Ghatala and others rejected the agreement. Paul Ali Ghatala continued the armed struggle, Gordon Mourtat Mayen and Aggrey Jaden remained in exile as political and historical representations of continued rebellion.</p>
<p>With the explosion of the Akobo Incident in 1975 when the integration process of former Anya Nya units into the national army broke down, the fires of war flared up again. The Anya Nya Patriotic Front surfaced out of small beginnings in the Akobo Incident and formed under the political leadership of Gordon Mourtat Mayen until 1981.</p>
<p>While the Addis Ababa Agreement brought for almost 10 years some measure of peace to the South, in hindsight the 1970s appear more as an armistice than a durable peace. The Nimeire regime which ruled over the peace of Addis Ababa increasingly flaunted and rescinded the terms of the agreement and propelled the Sudanese state willy-nilly into the fiery vortex of a full-scale civil war by 1983. The resurgent armed resistance has been led by Dr. John Garang and Joseph Oduhu, a veteran founding member of the Anya Nya in 1963.</p>
<p>Why has the Sudanese conflicts so far eluded substantial peace? This question can be partly understood in terms of the inability of the warring parties to achieve a political and constitutional arrangement which would resolve the contradictions on which the civil war is premised. The dominant feature of these contradictions is the <b>national</b> question in the Sudan; a situation in which an Arab minority controls state power, dominates the armed forces, the civil bureaucracy, the political elite, commerce, trade, banking and the judiciary, and orders these instruments of state power towards a spoken and unspoken policy of Arabization of the African <b>national</b> majority.</p>
<p>Since the end of the Second World War, more specifically since the Juba Conference of 1947, African <b>nationalist</b> opinion has largely defended the idea of a federal arrangement which will recognize the African majority. This has been repeatedly rejected by successive Sudanese regines. The Addis Ababa Agreement gave some room for African <b>national</b> self-expression in the constitutional form of southern regional autonomy but the looseness and fraglity of the constitutional edifice led to a steady erosion of its basis by the Nimeire regime which as time went on increasingly pursued policies of divide and rule, consistent dismantling of the Addis Ababa Agreement, and Arabization.<br /></p>
<h4>The National Question</h4>
<p>Only 39 percent of Sudanese regard themselves as Arab.<sup>1</sup> In spite of this fact, the Sudan is regarded by most international bodies to be part of the Arab World. This oddity is due to the fact that the prevalent character of the Sudanese state is Arabist. The Sudan in national terms in a minority-ruled state. In a crucial political sense this creates comparisons with white-minority-ruled South Africa and Namibia in sub-Saharan Africa, however limited the scope of these comparisons may be. It is ironical that this comparative perspective of South Africa and the Sudan is noted by the former South African white parliamentary opposition leader Van Zijl Slabbert.<sup>2</sup></p>
<p>The Sudanese conflict is often explained as simply a regionalist confrontation. This view is as erroneous as the suggestion that it is largely a religious conflict. While the problem bears both regionalist and religious dimensions, those features of the conflicts belie the more fundamental character of the contradiction which is that the Sudan is largely made up of Africans who are more concentrated in the South where their cultural features are also less Arabized. The southerners have to some degree been Christianized but most lean more profoundly on their traditional African cosmology and ritual. In the North, most of the nationalities have to a great degree been Islamized but again here Africanist beliefs are not uncommon, particularly among the Fur, Fung and Nuba. It is in the North that the African cultural traits have been most diminished and replaced by Arab culture. In many areas of the North, African languages are slowly perishing in the face of Arabizing forces and influences. The Beja, who have historically resisted Arabization, are increasingly being Arabized. The Funj Nuba, Messalit, Zaghawa and Fur, remain largely conscious of their African <b>national</b> identity. However, of all the African nationalities of the North, it is particularly among the Nubian that claims of Arab identity are most rampant. Another irony here is that before the penetration of Arabs in Nubia, this area of the Sudan had been Christianized; from earlier beginnings, by 543-580A.D., Christianity had established pre-eminence over purely African religious practices, and indeed Christianity then became the official religion.<sup>3</sup> As recently as 1742 pockets of Christian communities were reported to exist in Nubia.<sup>4</sup> Although today many Nubians claim Arab nationality, in as much as they have been culturally Arabized, it is noteworthy that structural linguistic similarities exist between the Nubian languages of the Nile Basin, particularly Dongolawi and Mahas, and the languages of the Nuba Mountains, some of the smaller African nationalities of Darfur, and some languages in the South.</p>
<p>As I have indicated elsewhere, essentially it is possible to classify Northern Sudanese who claim Arab nationality into one of two groups. On the one hand, are the Jaali and the Barabra who are mainly Arabized Nubian riverine cultivators, and on the other, the Juhayna who are mainly nomadic groups. Among especially the Jaali, Nubian dialects still survive in the face of increasing Arabization.<sup>5</sup></p>
<p>The dominance of the Arab minority in the Sudanese political economy is practically demonstrated in conditions of extreme underdevelopment in the South and relatively better development in the North. Class variation has tended to run along the crucial national distinctions. This is particularly noticeable among the elites, with African representation singularly weak among the mercantile and banking elements, judicial and military brass. Conversely, Africans are well represented among the ranks of the lowest menial workers in Khartoum and Omdurman.</p>
<p>The need for the dominant groups in Sudanese society to define themselves as differently as possible from African is in some instances reduced to absurdity. For example, as Joseph Oduho explains:</p>
<p><i>?In every passport given to any Sudanese, whether he be brown, semi white, pitch-black, it is always said ?brown? is the colour. And on my passport it is written that I am brown, and probably if I went one day to Nigeria, they will say, brown? This man! It is one of those things ? that you cannot know until you have lived here a long time to know the real difference between the South and the North.?<sup>6</sup></i></p>
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<p>The claim of Arabness in the Sudan carries with it, a subjective notion of cultural and national superiority.<sup>7</sup> This situation has tended to encourage Arabization.</p>
<p>Historically, in the collective psyche of the African, perhaps what has crystallized most uniformly in African perceptions of the Arab is the history of slavery. Abdel Rahman Sule, a Southern Moslem who was at the forefront of pro-federalist politics in the 1940s and 1950s, recalls his youth early this century:</p>
<p><i>?My father was a chief, the effendi who came around our village to kill elephants were Muslims. I used to see what these people were doing. That is how I became a Muslim. In 1927, I was caught with arms from Ethiopia, by then I was already a Muslim. But I was very aware of my Africaness. When I was a kid, if I was woken late in the morning by my father, he would say ?if it had been in the days of the Ansars you would have been taken?. My father always woke me up early so that in his words I am not taken by the Ansars.?<sup>8</sup></i></p>
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<p>The veteran politician Clement Mboro, whose father was an Ndogo Chief recollects that during the 1930s ?</p>
<p><i>?There were ? Arab traders and peddlers coming around to trade ? The attitude of the people was one of distrust ? That they were not sincere, they were not honest, they were not to be trusted ? they used to sell us the black people, they used to trade in people ? Thus we grew up with the feeling that they were not friendly, not sincere ??<sup>9</sup></i></p>
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<p>The inability of post-independence Sudan to meet this history squarely, frankly dispassionately; treat it objectively and openly on all fora of social activity has tended to exacerbate the Sudanese national cleavage. Oduho is caustic in his remark:</p>
<p><i>?Well, people usually are not very happy particularly people from the Northern Sudan, of the mention of the slave trade. And one really cannot understand why this should be so ? All the years I was a school teacher, history was out of the curriculum of the Southern Sudan. It was not allowed to learn history ? when I left the county in 1960, history was not taught. From 1950 to 1960 that entire decade, history was never taught. The history of the Sudan has never been taught in the Southern Sudan. Just to avoid the idea of slavery ? Now they are teaching it, but they skip over it ??<sup>10</sup></i></p>
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<p>The effacement of the history of slavery in the Sudan does not only in effect deny the Africans in the South access to knowledge of their national history, but equally this denial debases the history of the northern nationalities. For, as Sir Harold MacMicheal explains, the importation of slave women from the South which has proceeded uninterrupted for centuries, lends further measure to the spurious homogeneity of these Nubian people.<sup>11</sup></p>
<p>The unresolved <b>national</b> question and its class underpinnings can be identified as the fundamental cause of the civil war. The absence of a political arrangement which, while recognizing the majority African <b>national</b> character of the Sudan, affords the Arab minority equal <b>national</b> rights constitutes a recipe for continued war. Every single change of government in the Sudan during the past 30 years has to a different degree been prompted by considerations relating to the <b>national</b> question as expressed in the ?Southern problem?. As Ambrose Ring Thiik observes: ?This war started over 30 years ago because the unrealistic attitudes on the part of the Northern Sudanese who took over from the British, combined with the lack of any national consensus, prevented the working out of constitutional arrangements acceptable to the South?.<sup>12</sup></p>
<p>Thus the African <b>national</b> resistance led by the Sudan People?s Liberation Army/Sudan People?s Liberation Movement (SPLA/SPLM) has come to represent the latest installment of Africans in the Sudan in their quest for self-determination, <b>national</b> liberation, and majority-rule within a constitutional formula for the whole of the Sudan. Since 1983, the civil war has ceased to be confined to the geographical area of the South, and has spread, although weakly, to other predominantly African areas of the North, such as the Southern Kordofan region and the southern Blue Nile area. These developments emphasize the fact that the conflict is not merely regional but rather represents African resistance to Arab minority rule.</p>
<h4>The Consitutional Dilemma</h4>
<p>Present-day Sudan, like all countries on the African continent, is a creation of colonial powers; in this case Britain. Although the condominium arrangement of 1898 stipulated Egyptian partnership, Britain remained to all intents and purposes the very senior partner in the arrangement. Few have expressed British thinking on this matter as succinctly as Lord Cromer. He thought that the facts were plain enough. Fifteen years previously, Egyptian misgovernment had led to a successful rebellion in the Sudan. British rule had developed the military and financial resources of Egypt to such an extent as to justify the adoption of a policy of re-conquest. But England not Egypt had re-conquered the country.</p>
<p>He admitted that it was the Egyptian Treasury which bore the lion?s share of the expeditionary costs. Egyptian troops had been the teaming ranks of the military expedition, but they were commanded and directed by British officers. ?? the guiding had been that of England?. For Cromer, it was absurd to presume that without Britain?s role and assistance in the form of men and money the Egyptian government could have re-conquered the Sudan.<sup>13</sup> However, although in the condominium arrangement England was the unchallenged senior partner, ?it would have been unjust to ignore Egyptian claims in deciding on the future political status of the Sudan?.<sup>14</sup> Herein lay the extent and limits of Egyptian suzerainty and overlordship in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. During the period of condominium rule (1898-1956) many British administrators, particularly those who had experience of the south experience realized that the Sudanese arrangement was a potential powder keg. However, for various reasons of imperial self-interest, the British withdrew without a constitutional dispensation which could have defused the political and constitutional time bomb embedded in the situation.</p>
<p>Realizing the cultural dichotomy between African and Arab Sudan, the British formulated the southern policy in 1930, but long before this the de facto approach had been one of recognizing the difference between the social, economic, and political interest of the areas of high African concentration in the southern end of the country, and the Arabized provinces of the north particularly in the riverine areas north of the 12<sup>0</sup> latitude.</p>
<p>The method favoured by the British to insulate the African South from the Arab North was one of Anglicization and Christianization. In 1903, the condominium government apportioned areas of the region south of the 10<sup>0</sup> latitude to different Christian missions. This arrangement was largely blessed with the 1905 <i>Regulations and Conditions under which Missionaries Work.</i> A 1906 Act gave further financial concessions to the missionaries. African resistance to British domination was relentless and persisted well into the 1930s. Education was seen by Cromer as a crucial method of pacification. It was felt that English would support Christian proselytization. Northern Muslim soldiers became the next target in the strategy of the administrators and missionaries in the South. In 1911 Governor Owen of Mongalla suggested the institution of a new all-African southern army, to replace the northern Sudanese troops. In 1914, the first unit of the new Equatorial Corps was operationalized. In 1914 Sunday replaced Friday as the day of rest in the Lado Enclave. This regulation was implemented in Mongalla Province in 1917. In this latter province in the same year, Governor Owen ?deported? serious Muslims in the area to the North. In the same year the Governor withdrew from all Muslim festivals. In 1922 the condominium administration passed the <i>Passports and Permits Ordinance,</i> together with the <i>Closed Districts Order.</i> This latter law made parts of Northern Kordofan, Kassala, Gezira, Darfur and Equatoria closed districts. On the basis of these ordinances, the South was virtually closed to Northern elements. The 1925 <i>Permits to Trade Order</i> submitted that only natives of the South were allowed to carry on trade in the South without a permit. Further elaborations were made to this order in 1928. Syrian and Greek traders were courted since they represented the Christian religious confession. To reinforce British thinking on administrative practice in general and the insulation of the South from Arabizing influences in particular, the notions of indirect rule as developed by Lugard found fertile experimental and practical ground in the Sudan.</p>
<p>The statutory beginnings of indirect rule in the Sudan can be traced to the Powers of Nomad Sheikh Ordinance of 1922. By 1923, this had ordered and regularized the traditional judicial functions of about 300 sheikhs. In 1927, the Powers of Sheikhs Ordinance further extended the powers and authority recognized and enjoyed by the sheikhs of nomadic ethnicities to the sedentary groups.<sup>15</sup> In the South a meeting of governors in 1922 had sponsored the relegation of local administration ?in the hands of native authorities ? under British supervision?. African ethnic consciousness was encouraged. The 1928 Rejaf Language Conference selected six African languages as media for instruction. As from the same year grants-in-aid were made to missionary schools.<sup>16</sup></p>
<p>Thus, by and large, by the late 1920s a formidable array of ordinances, regulations and arrangements had been instituted which in effect closed the South to (unrestricted) Arabizing influences, and their effect of eroding the African identity of southern Sudan. Peter Woodward is right when he argues that this line of policy associated particularly with MacMichael ?was not a piece of unavoidable pragmatism?.<sup>17</sup> The easier course of action would have been to allow Arabizaiton to seep into the South, under the rationale of pursuing a united and easier Sudanese policy. Such a policy of opportunistic pragmatism would have, as is noted by the then British foreign secretary Arthur Henderson, implied ?a policy which deliberately and of set purpose aimed at encouraging the conversion to Islam of a population who have neither racial nor other affinities with the Moslem Arabs?.<sup>18</sup> There was through the period of condominium rule a distinct lobby within the British administrative cadre which felt that at some future date, the South should be appended on to the British empire in East Africa. This idea never got off the drawing board. Oduho has however argued that in practice the administrative arrangements for the South in effect did not only isolate the South from the North, but also from East Africa.</p>
<p><i>?Well, this idea of isolating the Southern Sudan against the influence of the North ? also ? isolated us against the influences of East Africa. And so, we were left nowhere, really, the people of the Southern Sudan ? Southern Sudanese had nowhere to go ? The Northern Sudan looked on Egypt as Australia or America in the early days looked at Britain. We ? identified ourselves culturally?through traditional religions and so on ??<sup>19</sup></i></p>
<p>Thus in a serious sense, the southern policy, as it has come to be know did not begin in 1930. It had been steadily under construction from the initial years of condominium rule. While the system differentiated the northern people and cultures from the southern, it was in practice not socially hermetic, and not pursued with rigour. Indeed, until the mid-1920s the Baggara were slave-taking in Bahr al Ghazal and selling them in remote markets in the North.<sup>20</sup> It is important to note that the administration and more stringent enforcement of the southern policy was galvanized into motion after the discovery in 1929 that extensive slave trading was still going on from the Beni Shanqul across to the White Nile.<sup>21</sup> It was after this revelation that the authorities decided to enforce more consistently the closed districts legislation and close the South to Northerners, including northern administrators.<sup>22</sup></p>
<p>The Civil Secretary, Sir Harold MacMichael, issued on January 25, 1930 a confidential memorandum to the governors of the southern provinces, in which he summarized the key tenets of government administrative policy in the South.</p>
<p>The policy of the government in southern Sudan was to build up a series of self-contained racial or tribal units with structure and organization, based to whatever extent the requirements of equity and good government permitted, upon indigenous customs, traditional usage and beliefs.</p>
<p>Mohammed Omer Beshir?s suggestion that ?its ultimate objective ? the separation of the South from the North ? guided the Sudan government policy until 1945?<sup>23</sup> is superficial and simplistic; more pointedly, that argument confuses the effect with the cause. This ultimately is the reading that can be made into the Governor-General of Sudan?s letter to the British High Commissioner in Cairo in 1945:</p>
<p><i>?It is only be economic and educational development that these people can be quipped to stand up for themselves in the future, whether their lot can be eventually cast with northern Sudan or with East Africa (or partly with each).?<sup>24</sup></i></p>
<p></p>
<p>The southern policy was predicted on the assumption that the South was distinctively and undeniably African. But the primary and self-interested objective was to achieve effective administration through the enlightenment of Lugardian principles of indirect rule. The three decades of armed resistance by the fierce and militant African ethnicities in the South was brought to a close by the Nuer Settlement of 1933. As late as 1938, the Government Secretary?s annual report for the previous year attested to the fact that in ?parts of the territory a risk of local disturbances and outbreaks of violence must always be taken into account?.<sup>25</sup> This was to be avoided.</p>
<p>This administrative policy was welcomed in the South by the administrators, and remained the official guiding formulation on southern policy until after the Second World War.</p>
<p>The 1930s saw the emergence of Northern Sudanese nationalism which was largely independent of active Egyptian influence, and which represented the rise of a middle socio-economic stratum mainly representative of petty-bourgeois interest but with some element of the small but fledgling commercial bourgeoisie. They initially surfaced as literary, cultural, and mutual-aid societies and were predominantly led by the effendis (petty administrators), the educated, and urbanized elites. Appearing first on the political scene in 1931, they made a more mature appearance with British encouragement in 1938 as the Graduates Congress. They represented a new breed, away from the more politically subservient traditional leaders. The Graduates Congress had emerged in direct response to the Anglo-Egyptian treaty of 1936. The treaty sought to give Egypt greater manoeuvereability in Sudanese affairs, which had been curbed since the assassination of Sir Lee Stack in 1924, two years after Egypt was granted independence. The Congress broke up when Mahdist and Khatmia sympathizers within the Congress disagreed over policy and objectives. These two streams represented traditional religious affiliation in the North. The Khatmia elements grouped themselves into the Ashiqqa (Brothers) in 1943, the Mahdists formed the Umma<sup>26</sup> party. The working classes in the North largely represented by the railway workers, became increasingly articulate during the mid-1940s. The Sudanese Communist Party as early as 1954 advanced the position of ?autonomy? for the South, however in substance this position by-passed confrontation with the fact that the Sudan was an African country with an Arab <b>national</b> minority.<sup>27</sup></p>
<p>The South throughout this period remained fairly peripheral to the economic and social processes engendered by the penetration of colonial capitalism into northern Sudan.</p>
<p>The British reviewed and abandoned the old southern policy formally in 1946. In his memorandum on Southern Sudan policy of December 16, 1946, the Civil Secretary James Robertson restated the new formula to read amongst other points that: ?? the peoples of the Southern Sudan are distinctively African and Negroid, but that geography and economics combine (so far as can be foreseen at the present time) to render them inextricably bound for future development to the Middle-Eastern and arabicised Northern Sudan.?<sup>28</sup></p>
<p>In order to meet and contain anti-colonial nationalist consciousness in the North and in accordance with the advice of Stafford Cripps to Douglas Newbold ?Not to wait upon events,?<sup>29</sup> an Advisory Council was created in 1944. The central question in the politics of the North after 1945 was the issue of the eventuality of political independence, and what shape or form this might take. On these matters the two dominant streams of North Sudanese politics, the NUP (Khatimia), and the Umma (Mahdist) and their predecessors reflected opposing viewpoints. While the NUP supported an arrangement of Sudanese-Egyptian federation in line with their old and much vaunted notion of ?unity of the Nile Valley?, the Mahdist grouping favoured independence with some measure of Commonwealth or British linkage. Most of the co-operation for both the Advisory Council and the later Legislative Assembly of 1948 derived from the Mahdist elements. However, the success of the 1952 coup in Egypt created a favourable political atmosphere for the NUP. The threat of prejudicing their imperial prospects in Egypt, the Middle East, and the empire east of Suez demanded remaining in collaborative terms with the Egyptians and their political sympathizers in the Sudan. American influence in British Middle East politics was not insignificant.</p>
<p>The October 1946 agreement (the Sidqui-Bevin Protocol) reached between the British and Egyptians undertook ?to follow in the Sudan, within the framework of the unity between the Sudan and Egypt under the common crown of Egypt?. It represented an attempt to buy the favour of Egypt by ?selling the Sudan to Egypt?.<sup>30</sup> While Southern opinion on these events and later ones was not invited, the Umma-supported demonstrations in the North helped to swiftly dampen British support for the terms of the Protocol. During mid-1947, the issue was taken to the UN Security Council where it fell like a damp squid. The Sudanese were generally marginalized in these discussions. Although by and large the Northern Sudanese had some platforms and institutional forms for political expression, in the South there were neither the platforms nor the cadre of educated voices to articulate their interests. The Juba Conference of June 1947 saw the initiation of the constitutional debates in the Sudan which have so far failed to produce a constitutional structure capable of containing the conflicting interests in Sudanese society. The principal architect of the conference, James Robertson, has written that:</p>
<p><i>?I thought that before advising the Governor-General in Council about this matter I ought to satisfy myself about the capacity of the Southerners to sit in a Legislative Assembly and play a constructive part in the discussions and deliberations ? I looked upon the conference solely as a means of finding out the capabilities of the Southerners, and it was therefore quite inaccurate for some people to say later that at the Juba Conference the Southern representatives agreed to come in with the North ? the only decision resulting from the conference was taken by myself. I decided that I could, after what I had seen of the Southerners who attended, endorse the recommendation of the Administrative conference, and ask the Governor-General ? in-Council to accept its proposal that the new Legislative Assembly should be representative of the whole Sudan.?<sup>31</sup></i></p>
<p>It has been suggested that ?the change of attitude of certain educated Southerners who had first spoken against any participation in the Legislative Assembly and later changed their minds, was due to the efforts of Mohamed Saleh Eff Shingeiti, a Northern member of the Conference?.<sup>32</sup> This view is corroborated by Sir James Robertson, who writes that:</p>
<p><i>?I guessed at the time that my friend Mohamed Shingeiti, one of the Northern Representatives I took with me, had been busy during the night persuading the Southern Officials that Northern rates of pay would surely come to the South, if they agreed to come in with the North. This apparently persuaded Clement Mboro and others ??<sup>33</sup></i></p>
<p></p>
<p>Sir James Robertson?s guess was apparently wrong. Clement Mboro who was the most articulate of the educated southerners at the Conference bears a different testimony. He recollects that in the minds of most of the southern intelligentsia who took part in the Juba Conference it was clear that the best course of action was to throw in their lot with the North, and join whatever constitutional arrangement could be reached on the basis of the unity of the Sudan. This was quite well understood by all to be the declared course of action since 1946. Again most of the intelligentsia were of the view that separate constitutional arrangements for the South within the unity of the Sudan was undesirable. The only prominent dissenting view on this was Hassan Fertak, who felt that separate constitutional measures within one Sudan were necessary. Most of the chiefs were of a different view. Their position was that age and experience had taught them that it would be injudicious to go it together with the North. Separation was a better option. In the event, the views of the intelligentsia prevailed. Mboro remarks that they never met Shingeiti except in the conference room.<sup>34</sup></p>
<p><i>?The one who attempted to influence us was Ibrahim Badri. He happened to have worked for many years in Bahr el Ghazel. He happened to know me, to know my father. I remember him, myself and Stanislau Paysame sitting, he pressed my hand, he said, ?My son, the best thing for you is to opt out of this thing with the North ? the Sudan is already united ? but for your constitutional development, you had better have your own local arrangement here. Have your own local council, your own local autonomy, but not to join in with the North straight? ??<sup>35</sup></i></p>
<p>The Advisory Council was promulgated under the Advisory Council for the Northern Sudan Order of 1943. This Council presided over by the Governor-General and deputized by the Civil Secretary met eight times from 1945 and was annulled in 1948.</p>
<p>The scheduling of the Juba Conference was one of the principal decisions reached at the Sudan Administrative Conference of April 22, 1946. The other concrete decision taken was with regards to the need and composition of a new Legislative Assembly to replace the Advisory Council. A British draft for the legistlature was in some details objected to by the Egyptians particularly with regard to the marginalization of the Egyptian role. These objections were largely overruled by the eventual Executive Council and Legislative Assembly Ordinance. This ordinance created a 12 to 18 member Executive Council, 50 percent of whom had to be Sudanese. The Legislative Assembly was structured to have 10 nominated members, 52 northerners and 13 southerners. Work on government legislation was shared between the institutions of the Executive Council and the Legislative Assembly. The Legislative Assembly which first met on December 15, 1948 under Abdalla Bey Khalil saw the formal incorporation of southern opinion into the developing constitutional dispensation for the Sudan prior to the attainment of the status of independence.</p>
<p>While political debate in the North was preoccupied with the formula for independence with regard to the degree of merger, co-operation with or independence from Egypt, Southern politicians were most concerned with ideas for the sort of federal structure for an independent Sudan which would protect the economic, cultural, and national interests of the Africans in the South.</p>
<p>US anxiety matched by pressure on the British government to conclude an understanding with the Egyptian regime which would protect western interests in the Middle East in general, and the Suez Canal in particular only served to raise Sudanese fears, mainly within the Umma, that Britain might sell the Sudan for a bargain with Egypt. Thus when the Egyptian monarch announced in the Egyptian parliament that the 1899 and 1936 Anglo-Egyptian treaties were to be withdrawn, the Umma-dominated Legislative Assembly went ahead and passed a resolution demanding self government in 1951. Ensuing discussions resulted in the creation of a constitutional Amendment Commission to propose constitutional changes. This Commissions started its work on March 29, 1951. The new, pro-Egyptian unionist political party, the National Front, the unionist Ashiqqa, and Khatmia under Ali el Mirghani, supported a position of independence under the Egyptian crown rather than outright merger, and all boycotted the Constitutional Amendment Commission, as they had done with the Legislative Assembly and the Advisory Councils.<sup>36</sup></p>
<p>When the Egyptian government on October 8, 1951 abrogated the 1899 and 1936 agreements and enunciated a constitution for the Sudan, it was rejected by all shades of political opinion in the Sudan except the Ashiqqa.<sup>37</sup> The British rejected the Egyptian constitution and ultimately prepared a report which served as a draft for the Self-Government Statute, adopted by the Legislative Assembly on April 23, 1952. The British Government endorsed the draft statute in October of the same year.<sup>38</sup></p>
<p>In July 1952, King Farouk was overthrown, Gen. Neguib?s new administration entered into negotiation with the Umma and reached agreement calling for self-determination for the Sudan preceded by a period of transitional government. All the northern Sudanese parties signed an agreement with the Egyptians on January 10, 1953 endorsing the Egyptian proposals. The British outflanked these developments with an Anglo-Egyptian agreement signed on February 12, 1953. The transitional period to self determination was not to exceed 3 years. The negotiations for the Anglo-Egyptian agreement excluded southern participation on the grounds that the South had no political parties. This show of disregard for southern opinion whatever the formal explanation offered was regarded with great suspicion by southern leadership. Benjamin Lwoki, a prominent southern leader later complained that: ?Southerners were not happy when the 1953 Agreement was signed. None were present. The Legislative Assembly was dead ? telegrams of protest had been ignored. The terms of the Agreement had not been carried out.?<sup>39</sup></p>
<p>One of the results of the Anglo-Egyptian agreement was that a Governor-General?s Commission was set up to assist the country in its transition to independence. This body did not include southern opinion. A Sudanization Committee was formed in February 1954 to localize administrative posts in the civil service. Of about 800 posts which were Sudanized, only four southerners were made Assistant District Commissioners and two Mamurs (Executive Officer). These developments did not help to allay southern fears regarding the intentions of the North. In 1951, a group of southerners had formed a political caucus; this became the Southern Party in 1953.</p>
<p>In the elections of November-December 1953, the NUP won a majority, and political moves towards independence continued amidst attempts to woo the South.</p>
<p>By the beginning of the 1950s, southern political awareness and militancy was on the upsurge. An older group of educated southerners who had been operating since 1947 as the Southern Sudan Intelligentsia Committee, evolved in 1954 into the Liberal Party incorporating and inheriting the mantle of the Southern Party. This group found a more sympathetic ear among the Umma than the NUP. The Liberal Party at this stage carried the bulk of enlightened southern opinion. A conference of the Liberal Party was organized in October 1954, in Juba. There was widespread criticism of the Sudanization process. More importantly the delegates agreed almost unanimously that a federal constitutional status with the North should be accorded South. When a tour of the South was undertaken by NUP politicians led by the Prime Minister Al Azhari, they received a frosty reception. When the government raised the salaries of police, prison officers and some bureaucrats to match northern scales, they left out the Article III clerical category to which class most of the petty southern intelligentisia belonged. In mid-1955, the Liberal Party issued a call for all southerners regardless of party affiliations to form a ?southern block? to pursue the objective of Southerners, particularly a federal constitution.<sup>40</sup></p>
<p>The general southern position during this period favoured a federal constitution, although there was a small group of Southerners which remained unhappy about any linkage with the North and preferred outright separation. The political atmosphere was charged. When 300 southern workers in June and July were dismissed en masse from the Zande Scheme in Western Equatoria tensions mounted. On July 25, a Southern M.P., Elia Kuze was imprisoned after an unsatisfactory trial. On the 26<sup>th</sup>, a demonstration took place in the industrial town of Nzara. Six Azande were killed and many others were wounded. From then on events moved swiftly to a violent climax.</p>
<p>The Torit Mutiny of August 18, 1955, was the ringing historical testimony that the African people of the Sudan were on the brink of war against the emergent Arabist-minority state. The constitutional demand of southerners had previously been largely a call for a federal status, but in the ensuing years the southern viewpoint increasingly hardened. So that, by the time the exodus of December 1960 took place, when southern leaders like Saturnina Lohure, Ferdinand Adiang, William Deng, Joseph Oduha, Alexis Bakuma and others crossed the border into Uganda and the Congo, the view that it was impossible to coexist with the northern elite in a unified state was gaining currency, and separation or secession was beginning to be seriously favoured by the more militant sections of African leadership. Barely three years after the exodus of 1960, the Anya Nya was formed.</p>
<p>When in December 1955 parliament sought a unanimous vote for independence, they failed mainly because the southern representation was apprehensive and skeptical of northern post independence intentions. As Deng Awur Wenyin has argued: ?? the Southerners stood in the way, because they thought (and rightly) that if the situation was like that for them while the colonizers (Britain and Egypt) were still here, how would it look after they left.?<sup>41</sup> Vague promises to consider Southern demands were made by northern politicians.</p>
<p>The Sudan became independent on the January 1, 1956 under the constitutional terms of the Transitional Constitution, 1956. Two years later, elections were held for a new Constituent Assembly which was opened with election procedures for a Prime Minister. The Liberal Party fielded Stanislau Paysama against Abdalla Bey Khalil (Umma) and Ishamil Al Azhari (NUP), knowing well they could not win, but anxious to show that the independent will of the political South would not falter. The primary object of the Constituent Assembly was to prepare a permanent constitution for the Sudan ? when the draft constitution was drawn up and presented to parliament, it disregarded the demand for federation. The southern parliamentarians walked out during the debate. The terminal statement prior to departure of the Southern leadership is significant. It drew attention to: ?The South claims to federate with the North, the right that the South undoubtedly posseses as a consequence of the principle of free self-determination which reason and democracy grant to a free people.?<sup>42</sup></p>
<p>Even more significantly, parliamentarians and notables from other predominantly African areas of northern Sudan, specifically the Beja nationalities of the northeast and representatives from Darfur and Kordofan subsequently advanced similar demands for federal status.<sup>43</sup> These developments were regarded as ominous signs and induced the narrow riverine Arabist elite, led by the Prime Minister, to arrange a military takeover. The Abboud regime ruthlessly pursued a policy of Arabization in the South.</p>
<p>The nationalist resistance of the Anya Nya grew with time but was weakened by excessive factionalism, leadership squabbles, regionalism and the absence of a consistent and coherent ideology of national liberation. Thus by 1967, warlordism was emergent, and tactics often tended to alienate the rural masses who formed the main support base.</p>
<p>The collapse of the Abboud regime in October 1964 was a direct consequence of the failure of the regime to bring forward viable solutions. In 1965, the escalating chaos prompted the convention of a round-table conference with the African <b>nationalist</b> insurgents, but this failed to open the way substantially for moves to bring the expanding insurgency to an end. Rather, throughout this period the articulation of arguments for an Islamic state developed increasing stridency. These trends were keenly opposed by the Southern Front and the Sudan African National Union (SANU). However the telling and more decisive opposition to theocratic constitutionalism was the fledgling bush war. As one regime after the other moved centre-stage with no ability to resolve the ?southern problem? the Free Officers Movement under Nimeire seized power on May 25, 1969. The June 9, Declaration recognized the cultural diversity of the country and this led the way to the Addis Ababa Agreement of March 27, 1972. While the agreement gave regional autonomy to the South, it addressed the problem in largely regionalist terms. Questions of religion, culture and <b>nationality</b> were given scant attention. Nimeire forged the Sudan Socialist Union as an instrument of civil rule and political machinery in the absence of political parties. In 1973, elections were held for the first People?s National Assembly. Its function was to propose a permanent constitution. The resulting constitution, while conceding regional autonomy, placed Islam centrally in the state and adopted Islamic law and custom as the main sources of legislation.</p>
<p>Within 10 yeats, the Nimeire regime made a full circle. Piece by piece the Nimeire regime dismantled the basis and structure of regional autonomy for the South. Throughout the 1970s the Nimeire government made an adept use of the principle of divide and rule in the South, exploiting for this purpose latent ethnic and regionalist feelings of people caught up in the holism of their largely precapitalist social world. The main focus of such strife and division, which was keenly exploited by the Nimeire regime, was the rivalry between the people of the Upper Nile and Bahr al Ghazal on the one hand and equatorians on the other. One key factor making the southerners particularly susceptible to the politics of divide and rule was the class character of southern leadership. Consisting largely of petty bureaucratic elements, they relied on government appointments and favours in order to maintain their socioeconomic status. Indeed, much of the redivision campaign can be understood in terms of the expansion of this class, competition for positions, and the expansion of state bureaucratic positions which redivision implicity promised. Above all, redivision of the South in June 1983 represented an open contradiction to the Addis Ababa Agreement, and the Southern Regional Self-Government Act of 1972.</p>
<p>The implementation of the Jonglei Canal Scheme to bring water to Egypt and drain the Sudd was taken up without proper political consensus in the South, and against informed ecological advice. Equally opportunistic was the project for the Kosti oil refinery which attempted to situate the refining of oil found in the South out of the region, and then pipe it out through the Red Sea coast at Port Sudan.</p>
<p>In 1980, some of the northern parliamentarians in concert with the government redrew the boundaries between the North and the South in order to bring key areas of Gogrial district in the Bahr el Ghazal and the oil-rich areas of Lakes Province, the Renk area, into the North. Despite a protest walkout by southern members of the National Assembly the new map was endorsed.</p>
<p>The imposition of Sharia Law in September 1983 was the most dramatic arbitrary act by the Nimeire regime against the rights of the non-Muslim Africans of the Sudan. However by then the systematic attack on all agreements and understandings regarding southern autonomy had already triggered off increased armed rebellion, and the SPLA/SPLM emerged to lead African <b>national</b> resistance.</p>
<h4>Conclusion</h4>
<p>The contradictions of Sudanese society which have for three decades kept the fires of war burning, arise out of the fact that the sharp class struggles run, as it were, parallel to the national and cultural cleavages within the society. The overwhelming proportion of the African people of the Sudan are concentrated in the lower ranks of the class structure. The small group of elevated Africans are of the bureaucratic bourgeois element and in general lack the capital and resources to develop along independent social lines.</p>
<p>The partial convergence of the national and class struggles premised a situation of uneven development between the North and the South. The ideological apparatus of rule of the dominant classes in the Sudan consists of the twin pillars of Islamization and more importantly Arabization. More than anything it is this latter which expresses the subjugation of the African masses within the class structure, and continues to constitute the focal point of the African <b>nationalist</b> struggle against Arab-minority rule. Unless there is a constitutional dispensation which recognizes the fundamental and overwhelming African character of the Sudan, and which recognizes equal rights for the Arab minority, it is unlikely that durable peace can be achieved in the Sudan. The experience of the past three decades bears testimony to this contention.</p>
<h4>Notes</h4>
<p>1. According to the 1958 Census Results.</p>
<p>2. Van Zyl Slabbert, (1985) <i>The Last White Parliament.</i> Johannesburg, p. 92. Van Zyl Slabbert was discussing the work of the German social scientist Theo Hanf.</p>
<p>3. See Giovanni Vantini, (1981), <i>Christianity in the Sudan,</i> p. 33, Bologna.</p>
<p>4. Giovanni Vantini, <i>ibid.</i> p. 205.</p>
<p>5. ?African Nationalist and the Origins of War in the Sudan?, <i>Lesotho Law Journal,</i> Vol. 2, No. 2. 1986.</p>
<p>6. Interview, Joseph Oduho, August 19, (1982), Juba.</p>
<p>7. Joseph Oduho, <i>ibid.</i></p>
<p>8. Interview, Abdel Rahman Sule, June 7, (1983), Juba.</p>
<p>9. Interview, Clement Mboro, August 17, (1983), Nairobi.</p>
<p>10. Interview, Joseph Oduho, <i>op cit.</i></p>
<p>11. H.A. MacMichael, (1922), <i>A History of the Arabs in the Sudan,</i> p. 113, Cambridge.</p>
<p>12. A.R. Thiik, (1985), ?Political and Constitutional Crisis in the Sudan?, <i>Sudan Today,</i> London.</p>
<p>13. The Earl of Cromer, (1908), <i>Modern Egypt.</i> Vol. 2. London, p. 112.</p>
<p>14. The Earl of Cromer, <i>ibid.</i> p. 113.</p>
<p>15. P.M. Holt and M.W. Daly, (1970), <i>The History of the Sudan</i> (3<sup>rd</sup> edition), pp. 136-137, London.</p>
<p>16. P.M. Holt and M.W. Daly, <i>ibid.</i></p>
<p>17. Peter Woodward, (1979), <i>Condominium and Sudanese Nationalism,</i> p. 11, London.</p>
<p>18. Letter of Lloyd to Arthur Henderson, June 19, (1929), quoted here from Peter Woodward, <i>ibid.</i></p>
<p>19. Interview Joseph Oduho, <i>op cit.</i></p>
<p>20. K.D. Henderson, (1965), <i>Sudan Republic,</i> p. 162, New York.</p>
<p>21. K.D. Henderson, <i>ibid.</i> p. 164.</p>
<p>22. K.D. Henderson, <i>ibid.</i></p>
<p>23. M.O. Beshir, (1979), <i>The Southern Sudan. Background to Conflict,</i> p. 59, Khartoum.</p>
<p>24. Quoted here from M.O. Beshir, <i>ibid.</i></p>
<p>25. Report on the Administration, Finances and Condition of the Sudan in 1937.</p>
<p>26. Meaning ?Nation?. Umma party is the political face of the Ansar Sect.</p>
<p>27. It is significant that in substance, the rationalizations of the Sudanese Communist Party do not differ from the 1928 formulation on the national question in South Africa as understood by Sidney Bunting.</p>
<p>28. James Robertson, (1974), Transition in Africa, London.</p>
<p>29. Peter Woodward, <i>op cit.,</i> p. 33.</p>
<p>30. James Robertson, <i>op cit.,</i> p. 96.</p>
<p>31. James Roberston, <i>op cit.</i> p. 107.</p>
<p>32. M.O. Beshir, The Southern Sudan, <i>op cit.,</i> p. 66. The author indicates the source to be a letter from the Governor, Bahr al Ghazal, to District Commissioners, September 23, 1947, Sudan Government Archives.</p>
<p>33. James Robertson, <i>op cit.,</i> p. 108.</p>
<p>34. Interview, Clement Mboro, August 17, (1983), Nairobi.</p>
<p>35. Interview, Clement Mboro, <i>Ibid.</i></p>
<p>36. See P.M. Holt and M.W. Daly, <i>op cit.,</i> 154-155.</p>
<p>37. Muddathir Abd Al Rahim, 1969, <i>Imperialism and Nationalism in the Sudan,</i> p. 192, Oxford.</p>
<p>38. P.M. Holt and M.W. Daly, <i>op cit.,</i> p. 155.</p>
<p>39. Report of the Commission on Enquiry into the Southern Sudan Disturbances of August, 1955.</p>
<p>40. Deng Awur Wenyin, (1985), <i>The Southern Sudan and the Making of a Permanent Constitution in the Sudan, mimeo,</i> Khartoum.</p>
<p>41. Quoted here from A.R. Thiik, (1985), ?Political and Constitutional Crisis in the Sudan?, <i>Sudan Today,</i> p. 15, London.</p>
<p>42. R.A. Thiik, <i>Ibid.</i></p>
<p>43. R.A. Thiik, <i>Ibid.</i></p>
<p></p>
<p><em>SOURCE:<br /></em><em>B.F.Bankie<br /></em><em>Sudan Sensitisation Project (SSP)<br /></em><a href="http://www.bankie.info" target="_blank"><em>www.bankie.info</em></a></p>
<div class="wlWriterHeaderFooter" style="margin:0px;padding:0px 0px 0px 0px;"><br /><br /></div></div>THE AFRO-ARAB CIVILISATION DIALOGUEhttps://www.theblacklist.net/profiles/blogs/the-afroarab-civilisation2009-02-28T05:00:00.000Z2009-02-28T05:00:00.000ZBF Bankiehttps://www.theblacklist.net/members/BFBankie<div><b>B.F. BANKIE:</b>Due to its denigration of African culture Arabia, since it’s incursion into Africa, has seen the continent as a civilization vacuum waiting to be filled by Arab culture and Islam.The painful fact is that it was only with the initiation of the current peace process between Khartoum, in central Sudan and Juba in south Sudan and the international focus on the genocide in Darfur, that it became apparent to the public at large, that from Mauritania on the Atlantic coast, moving eastwards to Sudan on the Red Sea, despite careful concealment, that a system of apartheid was in operation in the Afro-Arab Borderlands, where Africa meets Arabia, in places such as Mali and Niger, which border on southern Algeria and southern Libya.The potential for fighting arising from such a situation has manifested itself already in parts of Sudan, in Niger and in the on-going conflicts in the Sahel, involving groups such as the Touaregs in Mali and Niger. Concerned persons such as Prof Helmi Sharawy of the Arab Research Centre for Arab-African Studies and Documentation (ARAASD ) in Cairo, Egypt and Prof Kwesi Prah of the Centre for Advanced Studies of African Society (CASAS) in Cape Town, as well as Prof Dani Nabudere of the Marcus Garvey Pan-African Institute (MPAI ) in Mbale in Uganda, have been working towards the creation of a security mechanism to prevent conflict, by way of dialogue. Meetings have taken place between progressive Arabs and progressive Africans to find common ground and to implement restorative justice, by way of dispute resolution strategies, in a situation of historical opposition and mistrust. The former Chairperson of the African Union (AU) Prof Alfa Konare convened such a meeting of scholars in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia towards the formulation of ‘A Strategic Geopolitical Vision of Afro-Arab Relations’ from 11-12th May 2004 at the headquarters of the AU, in order to determine the various views and to look at potential solutions, by way of a civilization dialogue. It is all too apparent that some would wish to intensify the divisions and exploit them. Such forces have had the upper hand in the past. Only protracted, laboured, internal solutions, within the area, will help in the long term.As the deep rooted historical problems of the Borderlands receive better understanding, well meaning people of peace will be obliged to find ways and means to handle an area of Pan-African affairs, where black Africans, due to their geopolitical weaknesses, have been in denial since self government came about in Africa in the mid-1950s. Indeed these skewered relations date back a millennia, from the initial interaction between the two peoples. It was only with the Darfur issue emerging as a genocide, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, that the organization for Pan-African unity, formerly called the Organization for African Unity (OAU), now known as the African Union (AU), concerned itself with developments in the Borderlands. Formerly these were off-limits. During the long years of war in south Sudan starting in 1955, the fighting there was not a matter of concern for the Pan-African body. The south Sudan conflict was said to be an Arab issue, for decision by the Arab League only. Such a view was supported by Libya.Paradoxically, as it may appear, it was the Republican Administration of George Bush in the USA, which championed the cause of the Darfuri against the genocide and pushed the international community to conclude the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between Khartoum and Juba. History will draw its own conclusions as to why it was Bush and not the previous Clinton Democrat Administration which opted for peace in South Sudan. The Democrats did nothing to stop the war in South Sudan or to decisively intervene in the Sudan issue. They are remembered for bombing a civilian target in Khartoum, which was a pharmaceutical factory. They failed to concern themselves with the lives of the marginalized millions living in the Borderlands and were part of the cover-up. The last Democrat Administration in the USA saw central Africa, the Great Lakes and particularly the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in flames. The Democrats were part of the problem, not part of the solution. This might have been the most murderous period in the self-government era in this area of Africa. The policies in this area of the incoming Obama Administration have yet to receive clarity.On the 22nd February 2003 the Drammeh Institute in New York and CASAS convened the Conference on Arab-led Slavery of Africans in Johannesburg, South Africa. It was attended by scholars from around the world, especially from Sudan and Mauritania. Conference stated that after centuries of silence and non-expression, it was time to speak out on the inequities visited against Africans in their relations with Arabs. It recognized the need to overcome collective amnesia and the need for research on African interaction with Arabs, the Ottomans and the Turks, all of whom played a key role in making north Africa what it is today. Conference promoted closer relations with the eastern Diaspora in Arabia, the Gulf states and points eastwards. It censored the implementation of genocide in Sudan and charged Arab societies with the ethnocide of African people through forced cultural Arabization processes over a millennia. Finally the conference called for the institution of a civilization dialogue between the Arab and African people.Such a dialogue needs to take place between those living in the Borderlands, such as in Mauritania and in Sudan, with those in that area who profess to be Arabs. Some might assume that, for example, Afro-Brazilians, could conduct such a dialogue with the Arabs of the area. This would not be helpful. Neither would it assist if, for example, South Africans dialogued with Arabs. Africans in general, as has been said, have been in denial on these issues, and some still are. It is those who have felt the effects of the expansionist hegemony over a millennia, not the African Union, who can best begin a process of possible reconciliation, as seen in southern Africa.Such a dialogue will, as and when initiated in an organized fashion, be fraught with difficulties and take centuries to have effect. The current Government of National Unity (GONU) in Khartoum, Sudan, illustrates that the attempt at cohabitation of the National Islamic Front (NIF)/National Congress Party (NCP) of Omar el Bashir in Khartoum and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) in Juba, South Sudan, has been anything but harmonious. The relationship has been characterized by deceit, lies and betrayal by Khartoum from day one.Finally, the civilization dialogue between the African and the Arab must be conducted on a basis of strict equality and mutual respect. Such a dialogue, once its existence is formerly established, will take place in both formal and informal settings, where people meet formally and informally. It will need to be worked towards deliberately and continuously. At the moment Arab superiority to the African is a given, both in the Arab world and internationally. This explains China’s position on the Sudan issue, where due to economic interests, China is the principal defender of the Khartoum government and its main supplier of weapons. Another surprisingly vocal supporter of Bashir and Khartoum has been Tabor Mbeki.The current international positioning for and against Khartoum, in the issue by the International Criminal Court (ICC) of the Writ against President Bashir of Sudan, needs to be carefully scrutinized and followed. These manoeuvres do not just reflect support for a despot, but relate to initial positioning on the broad issue of Afro-Arab future relations and their global implication. What happens in Sudan today has application, for example, in Mauritania and the rest of the Afro-Arab Borderlands tomorrow. The domination of Arabs in this area was in the past a ‘given ‘ in the geo-political discourse. The facts of the area were difficult to locate ( the ratio of Arab to African in Sudan is concealed by the government of Sudan – the same applies in the rest of the Borderlands, right across to Mauritania ) and the area was not subject to analysis in the international media, being ‘off-limits ‘ for discussion in the west and east, in so-called ‘traditional diplomacy’. The well being of the area was determined by the neo-colonial arrangements left by the departing external actors, who monopolized developments in the area according to their own interests. The first generation of post-colonial leaders, such as Sekou Toure and Modibo Keita abided by these rules and did not seek to interfere with the colonial dispensation in the Borderlands.What broke the mould was the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) of South Sudan, lead by Dr John Garang de Mabior, fighting on behalf of all the marginalized people of Sudan, including the Darfuri, the Beja of the east, the Nubians in the north of the country and others. The SPLA together with the Uganda People’s Defence Force (UPDF) forced Khartoum to sign the CPA. This changed the course of history and the strategic balance in the Borderlands, from the Red Sea to the Atlantic Ocean, creating the opportunity to open the Borderlands to public scrutiny - an area which had been shut off from view. This led to the Darfur ‘rebellion’ and the further ramifications which are underway. The significance of the CPA, which cost three millon+ lives and long years of war, should be compared with the implications of the battle of Cuito Cunavale in Angola for Southern Africa. In the instance of the CPA the military struggles took longer due to international marginalization and indifference to the loss of African lives and was undertaken by Africans. In the international relations of the period 1950s-2005 the events in South Sudan did not feature in the media. The implications of this are that the resolution of issues such as Darfur and the Borderlands in general will have to be done by African actors, not by external players. Until Africans are strong enough the area, including Somalia, will remain war prone. Indeed this lesson should have been long learnt in the Congo basin. All these mean that the Pan-African body, the AU alone, has to be up to the historical responsibilities it faces. Gone are the days of external solutions. There is no other option to peaceful co-existence, combined with a preparedness to met force with force.<b><a href="http://theblacklistpub.ning.com/profile/BFBankie">B.F.Bankie</a>, former Researcher, Kush Institution, Juba, South Sudan</b></div>The genocide in South Sudan and Darfur and its implicationshttps://www.theblacklist.net/profiles/blogs/the-genocide-in-south-sudan2009-02-27T13:57:40.000Z2009-02-27T13:57:40.000ZBF Bankiehttps://www.theblacklist.net/members/BFBankie<div><b>B.F. BANKIE</b>:There were two main migrations out of Africa. There was the first exodus of the original man ( Homo sapiens sapiens ), who was black and who settled all over the world. The next migration out of Africa was forced by slavery. Although the western Diaspora in the Americas, the Caribbean and Europe is known, the eastern Diaspora, which preceded the western Diaspora by a millennium, is not generally known. The African eastern Diaspora is found wherever Africans were taken in Caucasia and Turkey, in Arabia, in the Gulf, in India and points further eastwards. The eastern Diaspora is coming into view, largely as a result of an increasing conscientiousness of African identity in places such as South Sudan and Darfur, where Africans who formerly, since time immemorial had identified themselves as Arabs, are coming to realise that they had been denationalised of their African identity, due to enslavement, colonisation, forced Islamization and Arabization.For instance in Darfur, in western Sudan there are three main black African groups, the Fur, the Masaaleit and the Zaghawa. Interestingly, in the past the Islamic leaders of Sudan, such as Turabi, tended to all originate from Darfur. These three African ethnic groups, which in recent times have been the subject of genocide by central government in Khartoum, were widely used by Khartoum as shock troops in its war against south Sudan, and to good effects. They are remembered in the south for their callous brutality against southerners.With the war coming to an end in south Sudan, with the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in 2005, the southerners attained some measure of self-government. The Darfuri Africans got nothing. It is this, and their long-term marginalization, which caused the Darfuri to go to war with Khartoum, in the realisation that they had been used by Khartoum, which through it’s genocide in Darfur, clearly saw the Darfuri not as fellow Arabs, but as inferior Africans. There is that well recorded statement by some Arab and Sudanese leaders that the Darfuri have yet to achieve full Arab status ( ie that they remained too African and insufficiently Arabised).One of the central connections of Africa with its Diasporas is culture. However Arabised and westernised the African Diasporas are, they retain elements, sometimes distant, of African culture.The study of African society, especially from the cultural perspective, teaches us that the unity movement of Africans should have consciously advanced through culture, then the economy, to finally arrive at the political union of Africans within or outside the continent – for the movement towards unity began in Africa, was taken outside Africa and was then carried back to Africa. The Charter of the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) taught us that the organisation was dedicated to continental unity only, despite the Pan-African impulses which lead to its creation. Neither the OAU nor the African Union (AU) made any pretence to include the African Diasporas in their deliberations or administration. Yet the key link in the history of the African unity project is the linkage of Africa with its Diaspora.As the significance of the struggle in the Afro-Arab Borderlands is better understood, so will the contestation around the African identity intensify. The Mauritanian, Garba Diallo says, ‘ a millennium of massive religious/ideological and human influx from the Middle East into the region has not only physically pushed the native population towards the south, but it has also displaced their African identity. The problem has become so profound that many of the Sahelian people cannot tell whether they are African, Arab or a mixture of both. This identity crisis is the root cause of the bloody wars of the Arabized regimes in Africa’. As the realities of this area are better understood, one of the consequence is likely to be fresh thinking about the sequences and consequences of unity.Despite the happenings in the Borderlands (e.g. slavery, genocide, wars, racial oppression etc), which developed over a millennium, the states of Africa have in general been in denial and have chosen to ‘look the other way’, as regards these events, on the basis of non-interference in the affairs of sovereign states. Thus the realities in the Borderlands were ignored as an issue in the OAU/AU and elsewhere by those who would be expected to champion the cause of their kith and kin. There has even been talk that concerned persons should ‘not disturb the peace’ by raising such issues at this time. Some Africans are saying that the issue of reparations for Arab-led slavery should not be addressed in this period of world history, due to ongoing developments in the Middle-East, again deferring the Arab question.One of the first steps taken by the Khartoum government after self-government, was to join the Arab League. The support by the Arab League states to the government of the Sudan in Khartoum in its fight against south Sudan and African nationalism is long standing and substantial. The support of the Arab world by way of finance and in terms of military supplies, has at times taken the form of volunteers. Ben Laden, the Muslim fanatic, spent time in Sudan and in Juba, fighting on the southern front of the fundamentalist global Jihad. After Sudan he went to Afghanistan. Will he next proceed to Somalia ? This war by the central government in Khartoum has received consistent support from the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Hamas, it’s Islamist wing. Hamas is on record of receiving substantial material support from Khartoum. Africa has no comparative reaction to the quest of Arabia to push southwards its interests and to secure for the National Islamic Front (NIF)/National Congress Party (NCP) control of the headwaters of the Nile, as far south as Uganda, if needs be. The OAU/AU was unable to discuss these matters, given it’s internal financial situation.The mercenary Lords Resistance Army (LRA), after moving from northern Uganda, was installed in Juba and supported for many years by Khartoum. Now that the LRA has relocated to the Congo, it most likely is still financed by Khartoum, to cause mayhem on the southern boundaries of Sudan. Such mayhem is used to soften up the area, before the jihadists go in to convert. This terror tactic was used in west Africa, in places such as Liberia and Sierra Leone. Africa, in the past remained in a defensive posture in its handling of Arab hegemony, suffering in silence, while sustaining its support for Arabia in its conflict with Israel. This embittered the southern Sudanese, who had begun fighting Arab colonialism on their own with traditional weapons in 1955. But for the protracted fighting of the southerners against Khartoum, Arab hegemony would have overrun the south and moved into Uganda. Turabi was intent on achieving this. As it was the southerners stemmed the tide of the Arab onslaught. In point of fact what has happened is that Arab influence moved round the south and into Somalia. It will not stop there. It must be understood that these are historical processes. After Somalia will come Kenya and after Kenya will come Tanzania. It is this push south, starting over a thousand years ago, which is the older and historically more significant feature of our oppression as a people, as compared with the western enslavement, which began some 500 years ago.Despite the various international conventions supposedly assuring human rights for all, Africans were only recently considered subjects of international law, whereas before they were treated as its objects, and it was well known that in places such as South Africa, they were denied human rights by the apartheid system, later considered to be a crime against humanity. It was only by 1994 after the racist authorities in South Africa had come under sufficient international pressure, that a planned regime-change took place in that country, prior to which the international community had chosen to ‘look the other way’ as far as the human rights abuse, which went on in the country, despite the work of Smuts in the formation of the League of Nations. The question needs to be asked, why no anti-apartheid movement developed in solidarity with the south Sudanese or the Mauritanians? South Sudan lost some three million persons during the long years of war. Why are Africans apparently indifferent to the genocide currently going on in Darfur?Sudan and other countries in the Borderlands continue to experience a similar situation as South Africa and Namibia prior to 1994. However, it needs to be stressed, that the situation in the Borderlands is more complex and its problems far more deep rooted than those found in Southern Africa. Sudan today, like South Africa was in 1994, is ruled by a minority, in this instance, a ‘coloured’ mixed race group, centred on Khartoum, implementing a Bantustan – type policy of separate development, with Khartoum accorded the benefits and South Sudan, Darfur, Nubia, Blue Nile, Nuba Mountains, the East etc, being marginalised and denied resources. Under Khartoum’s social conventions, black Africans are permitted status, only if they Islamise, Arabise and denationalise.Central government in Khartoum is at war with large parts of the rest of the country, including areas, such as Darfur, where the population is largely Muslim. Weapons of mass destruction such as poison gas, aerial bombardment were/are used by the government against defenceless people. Rape is used as a weapon. The pattern of human rights abuse by Khartoum against not just South Sudan, but other areas and the absence of a co-ordinated international response substantiates the claim that Africans remain partial beneficiaries, of international human rights norms. For Arabia, Africa remains a civilisation vacuum, waiting to be filled by Arab culture and Islam. Whatever the truths of history concerning the African origins of world civilisation (Cheikh A.Diop), such tenets are not taught in schools in Arabia. The knowledge that the original civilisation in the Nile Delta was black African is denied the Arab people. African political elites are accorded deference in the Arab world and diplomatic protocols are observed in state to state relations. Sudan teaches that it is at the level of ‘people to people’ or ‘state to people’ relations that the spirit of the OAU/AU supposedly guided by Pan-Africanism, is in need of improved performance by the Arab brothers. Those in the Borderlands tell us that double standards are deliberately implemented and that cohabitation in places such as Sudan and Mauritania is an apartheid nightmare.<b><i>B.F.Bankie, former Researcher at the Kush Institution, Office of the President, Juba, Southern Sudan.</i></b></div>The experience of Africans under Arab colonialism and its antithesishttps://www.theblacklist.net/profiles/blogs/the-experience-of-africans2008-11-24T14:51:01.000Z2008-11-24T14:51:01.000ZBF Bankiehttps://www.theblacklist.net/members/BFBankie<div><b>A synopsis of the paper- ‘The experience of Africans under Arab colonialism and its antithesis’, delivered at the International Colloquium at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 11-13 November 2008, on the theme, ‘Teaching and propagating African history and culture to the Diaspora and …’</b>The key to understanding Afro-Arab relations, past and present and the relevance of South Sudan to the future, is found in the reasons for the conflict in South Sudan of 1955-72 and 1983- 2005. The Commander-in-Chief of the Anya-nya liberation Army of South Sudan, Major General Joseph Lagu, and the Late Colonel/Dr John Garang de Mabior of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) stated that the root causes of the wars were cultural/racial, being the distinction between the Arab and the African. The Arabised mixed-race Africans of the centre, around Khartoum, sort to Arabise and Islamise the Africans of the periphery, including Southern Sudan. <b>Here one should mention that Khartoum enjoys the support of the leading US Islamist, Louis Farrakan, who has received material support from the Sudan President Bashir. Farrakan and others from the African Western Diaspora deny that slavery exists in Sudan and forced Islamisation.</b><b>Denationalistion</b>, by way of Arabisation, is also in evidence in Darfur in Sudan today, where the black Moslem ethnic groups, the Fur, Masaleit and Zaghawa are being demographically ‘cleansed ‘ by an Islamic militia and replaced by black Africans who are Moslems with a greater degree of Arabisation, such as the Taoureg of West Africa.The issues that the Afro-Arab Borderlands raise, in places such as Sudan, date back a millennium, having deeper roots than the settler colonialism of Southern Africa and North America, providing a more historically rooted definition of the African nationality than that of the black consciousness movement. What we learn is that the <b>African nationality</b> is primarily cultural, not race based. This has profound implications for the African unity movement and is in keeping with Diop’s thesis on the African cultural origins of world civilisation.Africa has an <b>Eastern Diaspora</b>, including Arabia and points east of Africa, in the Gulf states, the Middle-East, North Africa and Asia. More slaves were trafficked eastwards from Africa, than westward to the Caribbean and the Americas. <b>The African Nation is constituted by Africa south of the Sahara, plus the Eastern and Western Diasporas, in the Americas, Europe etc. The unity of Africans can only be realized if premised on the unity of the African Nation.</b>African slaves were taken across the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf, to India and points eastwards. There had been the first out-migration of Black Africans out of Africa to populate the world. The Black people, such as those found today in Papua New Guinea, Australia and the Philippines are evidence of this. The Eastern Diaspora is ‘disjointed’. Research indicates its desire to reconnect, if not repatriate, back to Africa.<b>There can be no peace in the Borderlands, without a structural change in Afro-Arab relations. Such an adjustment must incorporate not only the admission of guilt but also atonement, raising the issue of reparations. There cannot be closure without an opening by the wrong-doer, to enable review and judgement. These are prima facie requirements to begin the Afro-Arab civilization dialogue.</b>Arab-led slavery of Africans and genocide, as found in South Sudan and Darfur, go to the core of Afro-Arab relations. These issues were hushed-up in the past. Now is the time to confront them. At the heart of the matter is <b>Arab racism and hegemony</b>. The Arabs arrived in Africa in the 8th century AD. Prior to their appearance the Egyptian civilization in the Nile Delta held sway, which was a Black culture, as were Kush and Ethiopia, before Egypt. The Arab penetration proceeded by the Islamisation and Arabisation of the Africans, who were denationalised and enslaved. This presence is therefore correctly called Arab settler colonialism. <b>It’s antithesis proceeds by the establishment of the African Nation.</b><b>The Black Egyptian civilization, Arab enslavement of Africans and Arab colonialism are to be included in the curriculum reform agenda for schools, particularly in Arabia</b>.<i>B.F.Bankie, September 2008, Juba, South Sudanbfbankie@yahoo.com</i></div>