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Abstract
In a world virtually free of slavery and colonialism and one mainly driven by the sovereign state rationale, allusion to manifestations or the existence of some form of these phenomena within a state is often received with dumbfounding indifference or denial. However, a form of rule that had continued in South Sudan long after the departure of the British in 1956 was colonial both in its quintessence and flair in that it disenfranchised its citizens and denied them the most basic freedoms, services and development. Under this establishment, resistance against the coercive vision of the state was brutally suppressed for many decades. This state of affairs finally ended in July 2011. Nonetheless, there is a miscellany of unresolved post-colonial issues between the two countries that warrant attention. These include security and the demarcation of borders, the issue of ludicrous transit fees for South Sudan's oil exportation through Sudan, citizenship, external debt repayment, etc. These issues are part of traps inherited from the anti-colonial struggle, which have now supplanted the old ensemble of North–South conflict paroxysm. As a matter of urgency, the two countries will have to wrap up the incomplete process of negotiation on these substantive issues. The talks should be approached with a new mindset based on the new reality of two sovereign states. To the extent that it is widely established that South Sudan and Sudan must coexist peacefully in order to develop into viable entities, such mutual dependency must be based on equality and respect.
Notes
These challenges are, in fact, far too many to trace in detail in one article such as this study.
Chris Dixon and Michael Heffernan, eds., ‘Introduction’, in Colonialism and Development in the Contemporary World (London: Mansell Publishing Limited, 1991), 3; Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 17.
Jennifer Milliken and Keith Krause, ‘State Failure, State Collapse and State Reconstruction: Concepts, Lessons and Strategies’, in State Failure, Collapse and Reconstruction, ed. Jennifer Milliken (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 11.
Steve Fenton, Ethnicity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), 140.
Nana Poku. “Context of Security in Africa”, in Peace and Conflict in Africa, ed. David Francis (London: Zed Books, 2008), 92–112.
Richard Sandbrook, The Politics of Africa's Economic Stagnation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 85.
Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 25.
Historical sources have it that in the present geographical area of northern and central Sudan many kingdoms had sprung into existence and passed out. The Ancient Nubian/Kush Kingdom at Maroe and the Christian kingdoms of Alwa, Nabotia and Makuria withered with the advent of Islam in Arabian Peninsula and conquests of the Muslim armies of Sudan in the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. During the Medieval Times, Islamic Sultanates in the Funj, Masaba'at and Darfur regions held out till the representative of Caliphate in Istanbul, Mohammed Ali Pasha (the viceroy of Egypt), and conquered Sudan in 1821.
Francis Deng, ‘Dynamics of Identification a Basis for National Integration in the Sudan’, Africa Today 20, no. 3 (1973): 21; John Burton, ‘Development and Cultural Genocide in the Sudan’, The Journal of Modern African Studies 29, no. 3 (1991): 512; R.S. O'Fahey, ‘Islam and Ethnicity in the Sudan’, Journal of Religion in Africa 26, no. 3 (1996): 258; Francis Deng, ‘Sudan – Civil War and Genocide’, The Middle East Quarterly 8, no. 1 (2001): 13–4.
Francis Deng, ‘Southern Sudan and the Cultural Change of Governance’ (Conference on the Current Peace and Security Challenges in the Horn of Africa, Centre for Policy Research and Dialogue and InterAfrica Group, Addis Ababa, March 12–13, 2007): 92; Richard Dowden, Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles (London: Portobello Books, 2008), 162.
Richard Dowden, Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles (London: Portobello Books, 2008), 162.
Richard Gray, ‘The Southern Sudan’, Journal of Contemporary History 6, no. 1 (1971): 113; Peter Woodward, Sudan, 1898–1989: The Unstable State (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1990), 21; Monica Duffy Toft, ‘Getting Religion? The Puzzling Case of Islam and Civil War’, International Security 31, no. 4 (2007): 119; Francis Deng, ‘Sudan at the Crossroads’ (MIT Center for International Studies Audit of the Conventional Wisdom, May 7, 2007), 2.
Cecil Eprile, War and Peace in the Sudan, 1955–1972 (London: David and Charles, 1974). Steve Fenton, Ethnicity (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2003), 70.
Richard Dowden, Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles (London: Portobello Books, 2008), 162.
John Burton, ‘Christians, Colonists, and Conversion: A View from the Nilotic Sudan’, The Journal of Modern African Studies 23, no. 2 (1985): 352; Martha Wenger, ‘Sudan: Politics and Society’, Middle East Report No. 172 (1991): 4; International Crisis Group, ‘God, Oil, and Country: Changing the Logic of War in Sudan’, Africa Report No. 96 (2002): 8.
Cecil Eprile, War and Peace in the Sudan, 1955–1972 (London: David and Charles, 1974), 18.
Francis Deng, ‘Sudan at the Crossroads’ (MIT Center for International Studies Audit of the Conventional Wisdom, May 7, 2007), 2.
Ibid.
Even though the British conquest and subsequent campaigns to pacify the region were brutal, the Turco-Egyptian occupation of the territory was extremely violent and broad in scope. However, the northern Arab internal colonialism that followed the British rule was far more destructive than anything the South had experienced before. Some grim statistics indicate that over 500,000 people had died during the Anyanya war (1955–1972) while about two million died during the second war (1983–2005). By all accounts, millions of people were forced to flee their homes. For details on Anyanya war, see Richard Gray, ‘The Southern Sudan’, Journal of Contemporary History 6, no. 1 (1971).
Edward Thomas, Against the Gathering Storm – Securing Sudan's Comprehensive Peace Agreement (London: Chatham House, 2009), 24.
Richard Gray, ‘The Southern Sudan’, Journal of Contemporary History 6, no. 1 (1971): 118.
John Burton, ‘Christians, Colonists, and Conversion: A View from the Nilotic Sudan’, The Journal of Modern African Studies 23, no. 2 (1985): 369; Monica Duffy Toft, ‘Getting Religion? The Puzzling Case of Islam and Civil War’, International Security 31, no. 4 (2007): 120.
Richar Dowden, Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles (London: Portobello Books, 2008), 159.
John Young, ‘Sudan: Liberation Movements, Regional Armies, Ethnic Militias and Peace’, Review of African Political Economy 30, no. 97 (2003): 423; Francis Deng, ‘Southern Sudan and the Cultural Change of Governance’ (Conference on the Current Peace and Security Challenges in the Horn of Africa, Centre for Policy Research and Dialogue and InterAfrica Group, Addis Ababa, March 12–13, 2007), 94; Alex de Waal, ‘Sudan: What Kind of State? What Kind of Crisis?’ (Occasional Paper No. 2, Crisis States Research Centre, London School of Economics, 2007), 16.
John Burton, ‘Development and Cultural Genocide in the Sudan’, The Journal of Modern African Studies 29, no. 3 (1991): 519, summarizes the centuries of southern experience with external rule when he says: “In the record of written history, the peoples of the southern Sudan have experienced a diverse variety of external governments, from the Turko-Egyptian era, through the rule of the Mahdiya and the British, and especially as inferior citizens in the independent Sudan. They have never been allowed a government of their own choice.”
Richard Gray, ‘The Southern Sudan’, Journal of Contemporary History 6, no. 1 (1971): 119.
William Easterly and Ross Levine, ‘Tropics, Germs and Crops: How Endowments Influence Economic Development’, Journal of Monetary Economics 50 (2003): 3–39.
Bona Malwal, ‘The Agony of the Sudan’, Journal of Democracy 1, no. 2 (1990): 79; R.S. O'Fahey, ‘Islam and Ethnicity in the Sudan’, Journal of Religion in Africa 26, no. 3 (1996): 264.
Peter Bechtold, Politics in the Sudan: Parliamentary and Military Rule in an Emerging African Nation (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1976), 11.
In the late 1970s, the Khartoum government, with the help of Egypt and with French technical expertise, began a massive construction in the South with aim to divert the Nile water from the swamps of the Sudd region in order to avoid water losses due to evaporation. However, the completion of the Jonglei Canal, as it came to be known, would only provide benefits to the North and Egypt in form of more water for irrigation and agriculture, while destroying the environment and livelihoods in the South.
International Crisis Group, ‘God, Oil, and Country: Changing the Logic of War in Sudan’, Africa Report No. 96 (2002): 123.
This has also been recently dubbed as “the Hamdi Triangle” – deriving this infamous euphemism from an internal NCP Memo authored by the former Ingaz Finance Minister, Abdel-Rahim Hamdi, calling for the concentration of all development activities in this triangle in anticipation of South Sudan independence.
Peter Woodward, Sudan, 1898–1989: The Unstable State (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1990), 41–2.
Alex de Waal, ‘Sudan: What Kind of State? What Kind of Crisis?’ (Occasional Paper No. 2, Crisis States Research Centre, London School of Economics, London, 2007), 5.
Laura Cleary and Teri McConville, Managing Defence in a Democracy (Abingdon: Taylor and Francis, 2006), 26.
Peter Woodward, The Horn of Africa: Politics and International Relations (London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. 2003), 47.
John Burton, ‘Development and Cultural Genocide in the Sudan’, The Journal of Modern African Studies 29, no. 3 (1991): 512; Abdullahi Gallab, The First Islamist Republic: Development and Disintegration of Islamism in the Sudan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 45.
The distributive formulae slightly changed for the first time in 2005, following the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, when the North and South began sharing oil revenues from the oil extracted in the South. As the CPA Wealth Sharing Arrangement endorsed the sharing of oil revenues from oilfields in the South, southern nationalists saw it as an exploitative deal but also a necessary ransom to pay for peace and eventual independence of their homeland.
Joseph Hanlon and Helen Yanacopulos. ‘Conclusion: Understanding as a Guide to Action’, in Civil War, Civil Peace, ed. Helen Yanacopulos and Joseph Hanlon (Athens, OH: James Currey, 2006), 314–320.
Inclusion of this catchphrase in the CPA text came at the insistence of the Sudanese interlocutors who deluded themselves that by mere rhetoric, unity could be achieved.
Francis Deng made these observations back in the 1970s. See Francis Deng, ‘Dynamics of Identification a Basis for National Integration in the Sudan’, Africa Today 20, no. 3 (1973): 25–6.
Khartoum kept its wartime southern proxies as part of the Joint Integrated Units in the South as a sure way of scuttling the CPA. Some of them decided to switch loyalties in 2005 when Gen. Paulino Matip and a group of key warlords joined the SPLA. In addition, it meddled in the internal affairs of the SPLM in encouraging and openly supporting an armed rebellion by George Athor, David Yawyaw and Gatluak Gai against the Government of Southern Sudan in the aftermath of the 2010 elections. It smuggled huge quantities of arms and ammunition into Jonglei, Upper Nile and Unity states which have been used in deadly ethnic conflicts.
The CPA Wealth Sharing Agreement had provided for the equal sharing of revenues accruing from oilfields in the South and also accorded the South an opportunity to manage a conventional window of the Central Bank in a geographically segmented dual banking system.
For example, the borders were supposed to be demarcated during the six months of the interim period, population census and elections by the end of three years, Abyei Boundary Commission report was to be submitted by the end of pre-interim period and unconditionally accepted by both parties, referendum law to be ready by the fourth year, full withdrawal of the Sudanese Army was to be completed in two and a half years, etc. These timelines were not met and the North would only make a positive step when forced to do it or after pushing matters to the brink.
In history, examples abound in this regard: American-British Naval War of 1812, various post-independent African civil wars such as the Congolese and Angolan civil wars and Ethio-Eritrean conflict are strands of the same virus.
These issues are grouped under the loose-knit rubric of “The Post-Referendum or Post-Secession Issues”. At the launch of the talks on post-referendum issues, the former South African president Thabo Mbeki – who is also the Chair of AUHIP - postulated that there could be a possibility of the creation of two independent countries which negotiate a framework of cooperation, which extends to the establishment of shared governance institutions in a confederation; an option of two separate countries with shared soft borders that permit freedom of movement for both people and goods; or the other two options for total separation - with citizens needing visas to cross the border – and for continued north-south unity, if southerners chose that option in the referendum. The panel also includes two other eminent African leaders: Gen. Abdul-Salam Abu-Bakr – the former president of Nigeria and Pierre Boyoya – the former President of Burundi.
The Minister of Defence, General Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein, and Governor of Southern Kordofan, Ahmed Haroon, are believed to have conspired to squander every opportunity of reaching a deal by playing on the fears of President Al-Bashir and sparking war with the Republic of South Sudan. For them, any indication of change of the status quo, spells trouble for their safety and continued escape from the ICC prosecution.
In a public address in Al-Obeid on 17 March 2012 – punctuated by intense racist utterances and hate speech, President Al-Bashir described South Sudanese as insects that should be exterminated. This is reminiscent of Hutu extremists' description of ethnic Tutsis as cockroaches prior to the Rwandan genocide in 1994. He further described SPLM leaders as a bunch of thugs that should be only managed with a stick, invoking the great Arab Poet, Altayyib Ahmed ibn Al-Husseiyn Al-Mutannabi's scathing satirical odes in criticism of Abu Al-Misk Kafur Al-Ikshidy (905–968) of the Ikshidid Dynasty, who was a freed African slave and subsequently the vizier of Egypt. The most relevant verses are: (i) The neutered slave has become leader of free people; (ii) The free people are now enslaved and the slave is worshipped! (iii) Never buy a slave unless the stick comes along with him; (iv) Slaves are sleazy and belligerent!
See Enough Project report – dated September 6, 2012 – entitled: Sudan – South Sudan Negotiations: Can They Meet the Deadline?
M. J. Osborne and Rubinstein Ariel. A Course in Game Theory (Cambridge, MA, London, England: MIT Press, 1994).
Paul Collier, Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
Various studies have placed South Sudan at the strategic junction linking Africa from Cape to Cairo; and Mombasa to Douala.
The Jalaba state was hybrid because it had, on the one hand, an inclination to fully adopting a Westminster-type democracy in Islamic embroidery, and fictive because it had, on the other hand, adamantly pursued Medieval Medina theocracy.