Abstract
The chapter examines the emergence of an exile movement of rebels from the South, namely, the Sudan African National Union (SANU), that developed the discourse of the “Southern Problem” to advocate for the region’s self-determination. Among the range of discursive strategies the rebels employed was the analogy to Apartheid South Africa. A critical comparison designed to elicit international sympathy, the analogy was designed to enable the Southern cause to gain international visibility. The chapter shows that the analogy had limitations as SANU confronted the slippery nature of explaining racialisation and racism in Sudan to international audiences. Drawing on the parlance of the period—influenced by Negritude and Black Nationalism—SANU used racial essentialism to make the case for Southern secession. In sum, by focusing on this rivalry of ideas, this chapter holds that an intellectual history approach offers a vital reading of the conflict in Sudan.
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Notes
- 1.
R. Miles and M. Brown, Racism, 2nd edn (London, 2003), p. 112.
- 2.
Glassman discusses nationalism as a ‘form of ethnic thought’ not unlike race in: J. Glassman, War of Words, War of Stones (Bloomington, IN, 2011), p. 12.
- 3.
See Introductory Chapter for a discussion of this literature.
- 4.
SANU, Voice of Southern Sudan, 1/2 (1963), p. 23.
- 5.
Before 1970, the British Left considered the IRR a credible institution. In 1963, the Nuffield Foundation commissioned the IRR to conduct a five-year survey of race relations in the UK, and in 1969, the IRR published the findings of the study in Colour and Citizenship: A Report on British Race Relations authored by E. J. B. Rose. Leftist critics in Britain deemed the report controversial and allegedly reacted to the ‘partiality and pro-government stance’ in the book, accusing the Institute of serving Britain’s ruling classes and ‘spying on behalf of capitalism’. The confrontation was significant and threatened the Institute’s reputation in the British public and its very survival. http://www.irr.org.uk/irr_history/ (11 June 2015).
- 6.
P. Mason, ‘Foreword’, in J. Oduho and W. Deng, The Problem of the Southern Sudan (London, 1963). No reasons are provided in the book to explain why Northern politicians declined to participate.
- 7.
SANU, Voice of Southern Sudan, 1/3 (1963), p. 3.
- 8.
R. Gray, ‘Introduction’, in Oduho and Deng, The Problem, p. 1.
- 9.
Oduho and Deng, The Problem, p. 2.
- 10.
Ibid, p. 4. “Separate development” was the South Africa government’s official moniker for Apartheid.
- 11.
Ibid, p. 53.
- 12.
Ibid, p. 8.
- 13.
See Sudan Diplomatic Press, ‘The Peoples of the Sudan’, The Directory of the Republic of the Sudan, 1957–1958, 1959, 1960, 1961–1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966–1967 (London).
- 14.
Oduho and Deng, The Problem, p. 8.
- 15.
S. Mollan, ‘Business, State and Economy: Cotton and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, 1919–1939’, African Economic History, 36 (2008), p. 95.
- 16.
See A. A. E. Elageed, Weaving the Social Networks of Women Migrants in Sudan: The Case of Gezira (Berlin, 2009); Mollan, ‘Business’, p. 107; A. Quereshi, Insurgency and International Law: The Case of Darfur (Wembley, 2006) p. 55.
- 17.
See S. Hall, ‘Encoding/Decoding’, in S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lawe and P. Willis (eds), Culture, Media, Language (London, 1980), pp. 128–138.
- 18.
Oduho and Deng, Problem, p. 59.
- 19.
Ibid, pp. 41, 56.
- 20.
A. Klotz, Norms in International Relations: The Struggle against Apartheid (Ithaca, NY, 1995); B. Boutros-Ghali, The United Nations and Apartheid (New York, 1996).
- 21.
On 21 March 1960, the Apartheid government opened fire on 5000–7000 Black protestors who opposed the pass laws in the Vereeniging township of Sharpeville, killing 69 people. The massacre led to demonstrations in townships across the country, leading to a national state of emergency by the end of the month, and the detention of 18,000 citizens. Internationally, allies protested in solidarity and the UN publicly condemned the massacre by issuing a Security Council resolution. Sharpeville shifted international opinion concerning the Apartheid regime, and precipitated its international isolation.
- 22.
SANU, ‘Southern Sudan Nationalist Movement and Call for African Unity: An appeal to African leaders’, 1963, p. 1, Archivio Comboniani Roma (ACR), A/90/7/.
- 23.
The region only had two secondary schools for boys and a handful of university graduates. L. Sanderson and N. Sanderson, Education, Religion and Politics in Southern Sudan, 1899–1964 (London, 1981). L. Sanderson, ‘Education and Administrative Control in Colonial Sudan and Northern Nigeria’, African Affairs, 74 (1975), pp. 427–441.
- 24.
I do not mean to suggest that political literacy did not exist in Southern Sudan at the time. To the contrary, the political culture of active citizenship that exile leaders demonstrated within the broader international community of nations through their political letters may very well have stemmed from the late colonial period during which the ‘Condominium government was promoting ideas and discourses of representative government and national citizenship’, throughout Sudan, including among the missionary-educated elites of the South. C. Leonardi and C. Vaughan, ‘“We are oppressed and our only way is to write to higher authority”: the politics of claim and complaint in the peripheries of Condominium Sudan’, in E. Hunter (ed), Citizenship, Belonging, and Political Community in Africa: Dialogues between Past and Present (Athens, OH, 2016), p. 75.
- 25.
Ibid, p. 97.
- 26.
SACNU, ‘Report to Azania’, 15 May 1962, p. 7. ACR, A/90/6/10. Emphasis in original. In the 1962, the exile movement occasionally used the acronym SACNU but later used SACDNU more consistently.
- 27.
G. W. B. Huntingford, ‘Azania’, Anthropos, 35/1 (1940), pp. 208–220. The following source attributes the etymology of the name to Arabic: ‘Azania’, in K. A. Appiah, and H. L. Gates Jr. (eds) Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition (New York, 2008). The following ascribes it to Persian traders: M. D. W. Jeffreys, ‘Book review: M. Shinnie, Ancient African Kingdoms (London, 1965)’, African Studies, 27/3 (1968), p. 145. The Huntingford text makes the most compelling and thorough case for Greek derivation.
- 28.
Using Azania to refer to South Africa may have been the idea of PAC theoretician Peter Raboroko. Email correspondence with Professor Tom Lodge, 28 March 2017.
- 29.
C. R. D. Halisi, Black Political Thought in the Making of South African Democracy (Bloomington, IN, 1999), p. 63.
- 30.
H. Sharkey, Living with Colonialism: Nationalism and Culture in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan (Berkeley, 2003), pp. 16–38.
- 31.
J. Lagu, Anya-Nya: What we Fight For (London, 1972) p. 4.
- 32.
J. Howell, ‘Political Leaders in the Southern Sudan’, 1972, p. 33, SAD 803/5/19-35.
- 33.
Nile Provisional Republic, ‘Editorial: It is now the NILE REPUBLIC’, Voice of Southern Sudan, No. 5, 15 May 1969, p. 1.
- 34.
Ibid.
- 35.
ACR, A/90/6/10.
- 36.
See Istituto Artigianelli, The Black Book of the Sudan on the Expulsion of the Missionaries from Southern Sudan: An Answer (Milan, 1964).
- 37.
For example, see ‘Mission Superior Tells of Troubles in Sudan’, The Tidings (7 October 1960); ‘Sudan Court tries Priest for Treason: Protested school classes on Sunday’, The Catholic Standard and Times (11 November 1960); ‘Anti-Catholic Persecution Reaching Final Stages in the Sudan, Reporter finds’, NCWC News Service (16 October 1961); ‘New Threat to Missions in the Sudan’, The Tablet (21 July 1962); ‘Sudan Threat to Slaughter Christians’, Catholic Herald (14 February 1962); ‘Priests Expelled from Sudan’, The Times [London] (28 December 1962); ‘The Church in Sudan: Sudan steps up Attack’, Leadership [Uganda] (January 1963); ‘Sudan Consul Denies Missionary Murders’, Uganda Nation (January 1963); ‘Sudan Expels Missionaries’, The Christian Century (2 February 1963); ‘Sudan Expels 5 Missionaries’, Daily Telegraph (11 January 1963); ‘Vatican Plea Fails’, The Observer (13 January 1963); ‘Priest Tells of Life in Sudan Jail – Campaign of Persecution Continues’, Irish Weekly (9 March 1963); ‘Freedom of Worship’, Daily Nation (24 August 1963); Editorial, ‘A Restive South’, The Times [London] (13 March 1964); ‘Revenge for Rome’, [Translation], Der Spiegel [Hamburg] (19 March 1964).
- 38.
ACR, A/90/6/10.
- 39.
SANU, ‘Southern Sudan Nationalist Movement and Call for African Unity: An appeal to African leaders’, 1963, p. 1, ACR, A/90/7/3.
- 40.
Ibid, p. 2.
- 41.
Ibid, p. 5.
- 42.
Ibid, p. 6.
- 43.
Letter from William Deng (SANU) to the Secretary General of the OAU, 16 December 1963, in Yosa Wawa draft manuscript, ‘The Southern Sudanese Pursuits of Self-determination: documents in political history’, p. 141, D. H. Johnson Personal Papers (henceforth DHJ-PP).
- 44.
Sudan African Closed Districts National Union (SACDNU), ‘Petition to the United Nations’, 1963, p. 2. ACR, A/90/7/4.
- 45.
ACR, A/90/7/3, p. 2.
- 46.
ACR, A/90/7/4, p. 7.
- 47.
Ibid, p. 13.
- 48.
Fredrickson, Racism, p. 4. See, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America, Lanham: Rowman, 2003. France Winddance Twine, Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil, New Brunswick, NJ, 1998. George Reid Andrews, Blacks and Whites in Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1888–1988, Madison, 1991.
- 49.
Letter to the Secretary General, UN, from SANU, 30 March 1964, p. 1, ACR, A/90/7/7.
- 50.
Ibid.
- 51.
For more on the use of evilisation discourse in international relations, see A. Geis and C. Hobson, ‘The existence and use of “evil” in international politics’, International Politics, 51/4 (2014), pp. 417–423.
- 52.
ACR, A/90/7/4, p. 2.
- 53.
Ibid, p. 4.
- 54.
ACR, A/90/7/3, p. 6.
- 55.
P. Nugent, Arbitrary lines and the people’s minds: a dissenting view on colonial boundaries in West Africa (Edinburgh, 1993).
- 56.
D. H. Humphries, ‘The East African Liberation Movement’, in International Institute for Strategic Studies, Adelphi Paper: Africa, Vol. 1 (Abingdon, 2006), p. 36.
- 57.
Letter from W. Deng, N. Lore and P. M. Beit (SANU) to the African Liberation Committee (ALC), 5 December 1963, in Yosa Wawa draft manuscript, ‘The southern Sudanese pursuits of self-determination: documents in political history’, pp. 134–140, DHJ-PP.
- 58.
The letter to Prime Minister Milton Obote was reproduced in the first edition of the Voice of Southern Sudan, 1/1 (1963), pp. 16–18. The letter to the Foreign Missions in Uganda was also reproduced in Voice of Southern Sudan, 1/2 (1963), pp. 7–15.
- 59.
W. Deng, ‘Official Statement by the National Executives on the Sudan African Closed District National Union’, Voice, 1/1 (1963), p. 1.
- 60.
Kuyok, South Sudan, p. 364.
- 61.
SANU, Voice of Southern Sudan, 3/2 (October 1965), p. i.
- 62.
SANU, Voice of Southern Sudan, 1/1 (April 1963), p. 2.
- 63.
W. Deng, ‘Official Statement’, p. 1.
- 64.
Letter from W. Deng, N. Lore and P. M. Beit (SANU) to the ALC, 5 December 1963.
- 65.
Ibid.
- 66.
Letter from I. Nyigilo to Foreign Ministers in Uganda, 1963, in Yosa Wawa draft manuscript, ‘The Southern Sudanese Pursuits’, p. 127, DHJ-PP.
- 67.
Ibid.
- 68.
Ibid.
- 69.
Ibid.
- 70.
Letter from SAC[D]NU to Milton Obote, 1963, in Yosa Wawa draft manuscript, ‘The Southern Sudanese Pursuits’, p. 124, DHJ-PP.
- 71.
A. Kasanda, ‘Exploring Pan-Africanism’s theories: from race-based solidarity to political unity and beyond’, Journal of African Cultural Studies, 28/2 (2016), pp. 179–195.
- 72.
Joshua 9:23. Also, K. Nkrumah, Africa Must Unite (London, 1963).
- 73.
Letter from SAC[D]NU to Milton Obote, 1963, p. 123.
- 74.
Letter from I. Nyigilo to Foreign Ministers in Uganda, 1963, p. 127.
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Manoeli, S.C. (2019). ‘Apartheid’ Sudan: Rebel Narratives of the “Southern Problem”. In: Sudan’s “Southern Problem”. African Histories and Modernities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28771-9_3
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