Abstract
This chapter cautions against the dismissal of the Sudan African National Union (SANU) as a political failure due to its diplomatic defeat at the Round Table Conference and its disintegration in the latter half of the 1960s. It argues that the inability of Southern politicians to attain a self-determination plebiscite in the 1960s has obscured the significance of their discursive legacy in Southern Sudanese rebellions. The chapter shows that SANU established what became a regime of truth among Southerners—both in the South and in the diaspora, as well as among unintended audiences. It argues that this attainment of commonsensical status attests to SANU’s discursive authority, and the enduring legacy of its narratives of the “Southern Problem”.
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- 1.
R. Doty, Imperial Encounters: the politics of representation in North-South relations (Minneapolis, 1996), p. 72.
- 2.
Special Correspondent, ‘“Death to Arabs” call in south Sudan’, The Observer (6 October 1963), p. 14.
- 3.
P. Seale, ‘Sudan Drive on Rebels in South’, The Observer (15 March 1964).
- 4.
‘The Southern Sudan’s leaders’, Africa Confidential, No. 14 (12 July 1968), p. 7.
- 5.
His efforts were eclipsed in 1965 when Anya-Nya received a windfall of weapons at the end of the Simba rebellion in the Congo. S. McCall, ‘The Rise of a Provisional Government in Southern Sudan’ (unpublished paper, delivered 8–12 December 1969, University Social Sciences Council Conference, the University of East Africa, Nairobi, University College), SAD 803/4/26-34.
- 6.
J. Howell, ‘Political Leaders in the Southern Sudan’, 1972, SAD 803/5/19-35.
- 7.
Johnson, Root Causes, pp. 32–33.
- 8.
SAD 803/5/19-35.
- 9.
‘Southern Sudan: The Decline of the ALF’, Africa Confidential, no. 8 (12 April 1968), p. 2.
- 10.
‘S. Sudan: Who controls what?’, Africa Confidential, no. 12 (17 June 1966), pp. 4–5. Joseph Lagu resigned as Second-Lieutenant in the Sudan Armed Forces in 1962, when he left to join the Southern rebellion from Gulu, Uganda. He played an instrumental role in managing the logistics of supplying arms to the rebel movement from Congo through the Ugandan towns of Kitgum and Arua close to Gulu. Tafeng el Lodongi had also previously served in the Sudanese Army. He functioned as the commander of Anya-Nya in Eastern Equatoria in the South.
- 11.
Johnson, Root Causes, pp. 36–37.
- 12.
R. P. Stevens, ‘The 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement and the Sudan’s Afro-Arab Policy’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 14/2 (1976), pp. 247–274.
- 13.
L. Wol Wol, Voice of Southern Sudan, no. 1 (New Series) (15 January 1969), p. 2.
- 14.
A. Wanji, ‘The Attitude of Successive Sudanese Arab Governments Towards the Nile Problem Since 1954 (Former Southern Sudan)’, Minister of Foreign Affairs & Government Economic Advisor, 4 April 1969, p. 5.
- 15.
Ibid.
- 16.
E. Tafeng Longodi ‘Declaration to the Anyanya Armed Forces’ (11 June 1969), p. 2. DHJ-PP.
- 17.
Wanji, ‘The Attitude of Successive Sudanese’, p. 5. Emphasis added.
- 18.
Howell, ‘Political leadership and organisation in the southern Sudan’, p. 7.
- 19.
Wanji, ‘The Attitude of Successive Sudanese’, p. 7.
- 20.
Ibid, p. 9.
- 21.
Ibid, p. 11.
- 22.
E. L. Surur, ‘Statement on the Military Takeover of Government in the State of Anyidi (The Former Southern Sudan)’, Anyidi Revolutionary Government (11 July 1969), p. 1.
- 23.
Ibid.
- 24.
Mr Agolong Col Agolong and Mr James Amou de Arok, Memorandum submitted by the Azania Liberation Front (ALF)—Congo Branch to the 4th Summit Conference of the Organization of African Unity Meeting in Kinshasa, Congo, 1967, p. 7.
- 25.
Ibid, p. 8.
- 26.
Ibid.
- 27.
Anyanya National Organization, Resistance: The Story of Southern Sudan (London, 1969), p. 10.
- 28.
See Chap. 2.
- 29.
Ibid, p. 18.
- 30.
Ibid, p. 12.
- 31.
Ibid, p. 12–13.
- 32.
Anyanya National Organization, Resistance, p. 20.
- 33.
F. R. Metrowich, Africa and Communism: A study of successes, set-backs, and stooge states (Johannesburg, 1967), p. 77.
- 34.
Brownell, ‘Diplomatic Lepers’, p. 209.
- 35.
See J. H. Polhemus, ‘Nigeria and Southern Africa: Interest, Policy and Means’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 11/1 (1977), p. 49.
- 36.
Southern Rhodesian Hansard, ‘Constitutional Proposals’, 17 October 1968, Column 139.
- 37.
This is especially telling in a context in which Rhodesians tenaciously rejected Privy Council provision as an abrogation of their own sovereignty, accepting it only because it became the only way for Rhodesian independence to be obtained from Britain in the absence of majority rule.
- 38.
‘Referendum Bill’ (23 April 1969), Rhodesia Parliamentary Debates Vol. 73 1968–69 (Salisbury, 1969), p. 1375.
- 39.
D. O’Grady, ‘The Forgotten War’, The Tablet (26 October 1968), http://archive.thetablet.co.uk/article/26th-october-1968/3/the-forgotten-war (accessed on 23 November 2014).
- 40.
Douglas Johnson coined the phrase “unfortunate friends” in reference to Malawian sympathy for Southern Sudan. In person conversation, 2014.
- 41.
‘International Conference in Support of the Peoples of Portuguese Colonies and Southern Africa in Khartoum, Jan 1969’, ‘Background Paper Submitted by SWAPO’, p. 9, Weston Library, University of Oxford, MMS, Anti-Apartheid Movement Archive (AAM), 1393.
- 42.
The Coordinating Committee for the Liberation of Africa (previously called the Committee of Nine) consisted of Tanganyika (where it was headquartered), Uganda, Algeria, Congo (Leopoldville), Nigeria, Senegal, Ethiopia, Guinea and United Arab Republic (Egypt).
- 43.
Johnson, Root Causes, pp. 31–32.
- 44.
J. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT, 1990), p. 102.
- 45.
Krebs and Jackson, ‘Twisting tongues and twisting arms’, p. 45.
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Manoeli, S.C. (2019). SANU’s Discursive Legacies. In: Sudan’s “Southern Problem”. African Histories and Modernities. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-28771-9_7
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