Managing Ethnically Divided Societies

Abstract

The foregoing chapters amply illustrate the fact that the root causes of political conflicts in Africa are related to exclusivist politics that generate a deep-seated sense of grievance on the part of excluded groups. Chapter 3 demonstrates that the deeply felt grievances that contributed to the first civil war in Sudan included the reversal of the colonial Southern Policy, which would have led to southern independence from the north; the shortchanging of the south with regard to the Sudanization of the civil service and parliament in the run up to independence; and the outright refusal of the northern political elite to consider southern demands for a federal system at independence. The political dynamics toward Sudan’s independence from Britain provided the political opportunity for the southerners to organize in defense and promotion of their interests with the southern political and economic elite, providing the primary resources for mobilization. The northern elite’s outright rejection of southern demands constituted the policies of denial that were rooted in the mistaken belief that southern nationalism was nonexistent, and anyone trying to assert it was, ipso facto, a trouble maker. The decision to move the southern military corps to the north and replace them with northern troops constituted the spark, the x factor that ignited the first civil war. Whereas the war ended with the Addis Ababa Agreement in 1972 that granted autonomy to the south, the conflict was reignited in 1983 when the agreement was unilaterally abrogated and southern autonomy abolished.