The 2011 Referendum and the future of Southern Sudan
Presentation prepared for the Regional Workshop in South Sudan, of the African
Research and Resource Forum (ARRF), Nairobi, Kenya
Foreign policy options for the Government of Southern Sudan post Referendum
Background considerations
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 Ottoman Turks, 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 period, 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, coloured 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 the governance of the Sudan. The late Dr John Garang de Mabior (2008) refers to the
Jallaba as Afrabians, a hybrid of different races and nationalities, including black Africans,
immigrant Arabs, Turks, Greeks and Armenians, that first evolved during the 15th 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.
Looking at the socio-cultural structure of Sudanese society, Hashim (unpublished paper)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 coloureds of the centre of the Sudan, and are seen as
slaves, worthy of being dehumanised by genocide.
The institution of slavery in the Afro-Arab borderlands and Sudan, 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
1
raise questions of legitimacy of the state, and in the name of ‘national unity’ reference to
slavery is prohibited . Laya affirms there was a close relationship between the trans-Atlantic
and the trans-Saharan slave trades.
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).
Arabisation and Islamisation
Gregory.A.Pirio in his book ‘The African Jihad –Bin Laden’s quest for the Horn of Africa’,
provides some background information on the ‘Arab Project in Africa’, by defining some
basic terms. The term ‘Islamist’ is used to describe those groups that seek the establishment
of an Islamic state, which theologically promotes a Wahabist or Salafist version of Islam.
’Islamisation’ is a set of political ideologies that hold that Islam is not only a religion, but
also a political system that governs the legal, economic and social imperatives of the state
according to it’s interpretation of Islamic law. Islamists, such as those ruling Sudan, advocate
that Sharia, a legal system based on the Koran and the Islamic tradition of jurisprudence,
should determine public and some aspects of private life.
Pirio explains the term Jihadist as describing those Islamists who espouse violent action,
whether military action or terrorism, to achieve their aims. Jihadists see themselves as waging
war against ‘Kafirun’ or unbelievers. They see their struggle as a just war legitimised by
religious, political and military interpretations of the Islamic concept of Jihad. Jihadists often
see their actions as part of a local and global struggle to decentre the West in world affairs in
order to establish ‘Hakimiyyat Alklah’ or ‘God’s rule’ on a global scale.
In Islam Jihad refers to peaceful inner spiritual striving, which is a widely respected Islamic
ideal. Jihadi have misappropriated the word Jihad to sanction the use of violent struggle
against non-believers and Muslims, who disagree with their version of Islam. Terrorism is the
antithesis of the real meaning of Jihad.
In 1989, by way of a military coup d’ etat, Colonel Hassan Ahmed al-Bashir took power in
Sudan. The ideological driving force behind the new regime to promote political Islam was
Hassan al-Turabi and his National Islamic Front (NIF). It was Hassan al-Turabi who
articulated a grand vision for the Arabisation of Africa. Working with Ben Laden, who was
then resident in Sudan, they plotted to establish an Islamic state in Somalia, as a launching
pad to take control of Yemen and ultimately Saudi Arabia. Not only did they seek to control
the Horn of Africa, but also East Africa, stretching into Tanzania.
2
In 1991 Bin Laden moved his Jihadist fighters from Afghanistan to Sudan at the invitation of
Hassan al-Turabi. In May 1996 Bin Laden left Sudan for Jalalabad, Afghanistan. He left due
to pressure from al-Bashir, who was then struggling to take the de facto leadership of Sudan
from al-Turabi. It was during Ben Laden’s residence in Sudan that Islamic fundamentalist
structures were planted in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Uganda and Tanzania. Sudan’s
attempts to set up a Jihadist mobilisation in Tanzania was thwarted by the Tanzanian
government. Apart from seeking to Arabize and Islamize Africa, Sudan sort to cut-off
support for the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A).
Nial Bol in his piece of the 15 April 1998 entitled ‘Religion- Africa: Countries of the Horn
urged to apply Sharia’, states :‘An ideology of expansionist Islamic fundamentalism, which sought to’ Arabise’ all of
Sudan and the Horn, underpinned Sudan’s regional aggression’.
From 1989, or shortly thereafter, till 1999, the former Dean of the Law Faculty, University of
Khartoum, al-Turabi, was the power behind the throne in Sudan and to that extent, has
responsibility, along with Bashir, for the war in South Sudan costing over two and a half
million lives. These days al-Turabi portrays himself as a democrat. Darfuri in origin, he
represents a tradition in Sudanese public life, of the pursuit of radical Islam by way of public
office, however sophisticated and germane his rhetoric. It is said that al-Turabi was a close
associate of the Egyptian Dr Ayman al-Zawahari, one of the fundamentalists leaders in the
global structure. The NIF draws it’s support from University educated Sudanese, middle class
males, according to Pirio. It was Turabi’s NIF that preached the Arabizartion of Africa and
the Islamisation of ( Black) United States. There are many Muslims in Sudan who do not
prescribe to violent Islam, who are democrats as well as progressives, representing a more
wholesome future for the country. So long as there is power to be taken and detained by the
gun, the moderate tendency in Sudan’s public life will be on the defensive.
In 1993 Khartoum began it’s support for the Northern Ugandan Lord’s Resistance Army
(LRA), as a way to discourage Ugandan support for the SPLA. What had begun as a
Christian fundamentalist movement lead by the Prophetess Alice Lakwena, became a band of
ruthless mercenaries, lead by Joseph Kony. Some say that after 1996 Sudan moderated it’s
international relations, in as far as the Horn is concerned. Rather it switched it’s attention to
the centrifugal point in the continental configuration, that is equitorial Africa, being the
Democratic Republic of the Congo ( DRC) and the Central African Republic ( CAR ). The
Sudan Army appeared in Congo in the dying days of the Mobutu regime. This should have
been a signal of Sudanese interest in equitorial Africa. Khartoum continues to fund the LRA
which is increasingly active in CAR. From these observation it would be incorrect to mark
1996 as a turning point in the use of terror by Khartoum.If anything Khatoum shifted
attention to a terrain which had not previously experienced the type of savagery seen in South
Sudan and Northern Uganda. The LRA activities in DRC and CAR are not linked in the
Western Press to Khartoum.
Mareke Schomerus in her ‘The Lord’s Resistance Army in Sudan: a history and overview’,
tells us that the earliest sightings of the LRA in Eastern Equitoria in South Sudan date from
1991. By 1994 it had located it’s base of operations there. According to her, the relations
LRA-Khartoum peaked in 1996. She goes on to state that today the LRA denies any
relationship with the Government of Sudan. This begs the question, in whose interest are the
LRA weekly reported rampages in DRC and CAR ? Your writer suggest that these activities
3
represent the softening up of these countries before intense and violent
Arabisation/Islamisation. Schomerus states that the relations soured when Khartoum diverted
LRA fighters to Darfur and refused to return The LRA today acts as the frontline of Arab
penetration into tropical Africa. Rather than ignoring this, the policy should change to active
exposure of Arab violent expansion in Africa, which is crossing the Equator. This should be
addressed not ignored. Regional organs for security should address what Bashir describes as
‘winning’ in Africa.
By 1999 al-Bashir and his erstwhile ally al-Turabi, were locked in a power struggle, with alTurabi seeking to replace al-Bashir as President of Sudan. Al-Bashir prevailed. Since, alTurabi has been moved in and out of prison, accused of plotting the overthrow of al-Bashir.
With al-Turabi off the scene the Arab militia called the Janjaweed, supported by Khartoum,
committed atrocities in Darfur. The fighting in Darfur will continue post referendum, but for
how long, is uncertain. Khartoum is pressurising JEM through it’s leader, Khalil Ibrahim,
currently unable to leave Libya.
The international scenario
President Omar Hassan Al Bashir, President of the Sudan, in his address to the OIC in Abuja,
Nigeria (November 1989) declared that the destiny of Islam in Africa is to win. This
represents a defining statement on the ‘Arab Project in Africa’ and also represents a direct
challenge to African sovereignty and was a calculated threat of interference in the internal
affairs of all the states of Africa. In 1998 Bashir introduced an Islamic Constitution to Sudan,
making the Sudan a de jure Islamic Republic. Sharia Islamic codes became applicable to nonMuslims. Islam was used to Arabise all the people of the Sudan. Al Bashir stands indicted by
the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur,
in western Sudan, a region of some seven million people. The conflict in Darfur has left some
200 000–450 000 black Africans dead and over 2.5 million displaced. The resolution of the
Darfur conflict, like that in South Sudan which preceded it, and upon which it was modelled,
represents a challenge not only to Africans, but to humanity.
The ascension, career and fate of persons such as Musa Hilal and Haruna, Sudanese
government officials indicted by the ICC, provides a graphic illustration of the nature of
northern/Khartoum society and its distorted and racist manipulations of Islam. Similar
societal problems are manifest across the borderlands from Port Sudan on the Red Sea,
between the Beja and Khartoum, through Tchad, Niger and Mali, to Mauritania. Indeed
Mauritania has a caste system that dates back centuries, which successive governments since
self-government have been unable to uproot: families are inherited as slaves from one
generation to another.
The reaction of Africa to Bashir’s indictment has created unease amongst those of Africa
descent in the global African community. The majority of African states, at a meeting in
Libya, apparently took the position that the issue of the indictment was targeted and unfair
and they refuse to implement it, despite being signatories to the Rome Statutes, establishing
the ICC. These states say that leaders in the West have committed worse offences in places
like Iraq and Afghanistan. This has pushed the long struggle of the Southern Sudanese into
the shadows. It receives little reportage. One sees the discomfort of the African states, unable
to show solidarity with kith and kin. This represents the continuation of the past practice of
the African states of turning a blind eye to the goings-on in the Afro-Arab borderlands.
Another strategy used by Arabia to determine events in Africa has been the division of Africa
4
from it’s Diasporas. It was the Diaspora that originated Pan-Africanism. An Africa severed
from it’s Diaspora would be weakened. This is tantamount to dividing the African Nation,
constituted by Sub-Saharan Africa and its Diasporas. Arabia never wanted the African
Diaspora in the OAU/AU and still resists the integration of the Diaspora as the ‘Sixth
Region’ of the AU. The western Diaspora in the Americas etc is well known. However there
is an eastern Diaspora in Arabia and the Middle-East.
A classic example of the volatility of the borderlands is found in the northern areas of
Mauritania, Mali and Niger, a region inhabited across borders by the Touareg, a black
Negroid people who were Arabised and who enslaved their neighbours. In the scramble to
decolonise and balkanise, they had been given reason to hope that they would be accorded
their own state. Instead the Touareg were divided between the new states that were created.
As a result, they found themselves administered by African political leaders, some of whom
were the descendants of their former slaves. Libya funded several armed Touareg groups,
dedicated to fighting the governments of the new states. Together, in the 1960s, they called
themselves the Azawad United Front (Diakite 2006). The Touareg have been found in recent
years settled in the burnt villages abandoned by the Fur, Massalit and Zaghawa in Darfur.
Their rebellion, mediated by Algeria, continues to this day. This terrain of conflict is now the
playground of Al Qaeda Magreb.The Arab League has not been able to end these longrunning borderland issues, which receive coverage in the French language press. For those
interested in the Sahel, the Touareg rebellion is a classical situation of slow but increasing
conflict axed on the same issues at the heart of the Sudan conflict. Today the activities of
what are described as Arab fundamentalist terrorists at the juncture of Mauritania, Mali, and
Algeria, has created a situation inviting the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) to
‘put boots on the ground’. In actual fact the position black Africa had adopted in the past on
the issues of the Sahel and the borderlands cannot be sustained, as it is now clear that plans
are underway to rapidly and violently push the Arab Project in Africa across the Equator into
the heart of black Africa. Why this is happening at this point in time, probably the Southern
Sudanese and Darfuri may best be equipped to explain and is probably linked to the impasse
in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
This may be the appropriate place to acknowledge, on behalf of Pan-Africanists in general,
the immense and historical debt that we owe not only the Southern Sudanese, but also the
Darfuri, the Nubians and the other marginalised groups in Sudan. Your author was privileged
to live in Juba, South Sudan, from 2006-8, as the South emerged from war and witnessed the
tremendous sacrifices the South made, which in fact halted the Arab expansion project at the
border between South Sudan and Uganda. Northern Ugandan had become a no-go area with
it’s population herded into protected settlements to ward off the Khartoum backed terrorists,
the Lords Resistance Army (LRA). The gray war in northern Uganda was not well
understood in Africa south of the Sahara. Few recognised Khartoum’s hand behind the
scenes. Yet again Africa choose to look the other way, compounding previous errors of
approach to unity, by assuming that geographic unity took precedence over what Diop called
‘cultural unity’. But we must remember that Arabia sees Africa as a ‘cultural vacuum’
waiting to be filled by Islam. Like the European colonisers, who came, they claim ‘to
civilise’, the Arabs come to Islamize and Arabize.
Outsiders who have researched firsthand what is in fact going on in the Afro–Arab
borderlands have concluded that events there are not a product of chance. They are the
calculated result of forces from within and without the region that see it as an area that is offlimits to public scrutiny. There are few attendant risks of exposure, which allows the
5
borderlands to be utilised for human trafficking and smuggling, the testing of new weapons
systems (including nuclear) and other inhumane practices, in complete disregard of the
welfare of the inhabitants. Of late, the place has become an area for international hostagetaking by groups, one of which goes by the name of Al-Qaeda, a product of the Salifista
armed rebellion from Algeria.
At the 7th Pan-African Congress (PAC) held in Kampala, Uganda in 1994, without doubt the
heavy northern Sudanese attendance (including the Sudan’s current Ambassador at the
United Nations, Abdulmahmuud Abdulhalim) was not explained by any affection for PanAfricanism/African nationalism – as northern Sudanese owe their loyalty first to their Arab
identity and the Arab Nation/League. Rather, they were there because the Congress offered
the unique opportunity to update their own understandings of the trends and concerns of the
Africanist movement (Bankie 1995). Arabia had long understood the key to overrule
Africans, was to divide the mainland from it’s Diapora, thus dividing and ruling the African
Nation. Matters such as this seemed to have escaped the attention of Pan-Africanists, between
the 5th Congress of 1945 and Ghana accession to self government in 1957. It was in this
period 1945-57 that Pan-Africanism lost its way and became infatuated with the geographical
entity, which is the Continent ( continentalism). Although the 5th Pan-African Congress is
recognised as leading directly to the self government in Africa, it also lead to the unity of
North Africa with Africa South of the Sahara, something that ran against the grain of history,
without any acknowledgement of guilt, without the payment of reparations, based on the
apparent good intentions of some Arab leaders. This conclusion and the need for Africanists
to come to terms with the ulterior motives of northern Sudanese in matters effecting African
unity, supports the thesis of Afrocentric social and human sciences, seeking to redefine and to
reposition African people in the new world, ‘to reclaim African heritage that had long been
denied, stolen and plundered’(Nabudere 2007, 8). Dani Nabudere goes on to spell out that in
the past the production of knowledge in the African context was done for purposes of control,
which had been the overall historic aim of European scholarship in Africa. Colonial
scholarship needs to be archived and replaced by knowledge based on sound research done
by Africans in the context of African realities.
It is South Sudan’s potential emergence as new state in Africa that poses the first major
challenge to the post, or we should rather say, neo-colonial state. In historical perspective
these states were the product of a deliberate policy of decolonisation. They were in large part
the historical legacy of the ‘carve-up’ and ‘spoils system’ which re-connected Africa with the
western hemisphere, Africa having been severed from global interaction after civilisation
moved from the Nile Delta to Greece. By the time the Roman Empire fell Africa had been
consigned to the dustbin by western scholars as a ‘useless continent’( the Economist ), which
had contributed nothing to humanity.Suddenly, with the economic crisis in the west in the
late 1990s and China’s emergence in the current multi-polar world, Africa, they say, has
entered a period of rapid growth. These days the imminent challenge to western hegemony
from Asia has dampened down the articulation of western racist attitudes about the African.
In the case of Sudan the country acceded to self-government as a result of a particular
colonial arrangement called the Anglo-Egyptian Condominium. In the Sahel the European
colonialists compromised the Arabs in their methods of administration, preferring to govern
through Arabs or in the case of Sudan, Arabised coloureds, who took on the world view of
their European masters, that the African was a sub-human. Yet the Arabs should and do
know better, because of the remains of the Black Pharaohs are to be found today in north east
Sudan and the Nile, the earliest creators of the Nile Delta culture, which was later Arabised.
6
This part of the history of north east Africa is hushed up by the Egyptians and Arabia in
general.
The Sudanese political situation resembles apartheid in South Africa and Namibia, and
qualifies as a case of ‘internal colonialism’. As South Africa had, so the Sudan has its ‘black
spots’. The Nubians are a case in point. The situation of the Nubian Sudanese, living near the
Egyptian border of the Sudan, is a matter of concern due to Khartoum’s implementation of
policies aimed at marginalising the Nubians. First, by impoverishing their region and driving
them from their historical homelands (Hashim 2007); second, by resettling Arab groups in the
lands left behind; third, by pushing the Nubians into Arabisation through biased educational
curricula, at the expense of their own languages and cultures; and fourth, by nursing a culture
of complicity among Nubian intellectuals to help facilitate these policies. Based on
statements by Khartoum officials, the scale of demographic engineering in Sudanese Nubia is
programmed to re-settle hundreds of thousands of Egyptians in the area.
The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and the African Union (AU)
The OAU came about at the end of a long historical process which saw the realisation of PanAfricanism/African Nationalism. By that is meant that shortly after Africa began to
decolonise, the vision of a united Africa, ruling itself with dignity and respect, lead to the
formation of the OAU. This historical process had begun with the abduction of African slaves
from Africa to the Western hemisphere, where the incubation of Africans in the ‘new world’
was built on the elimination of the indigenous people of America and the harnessing of black
labour for development. This led to a conscientisation around common experiences of
enslavement, racism and exploitation (Sibanda 2008), culminating in the Garveyist ‘back to
Africa movement’ and the Pan-African Congress series organised by the African American
scholar W.E.B. Du Bois. Whereas Du Bois is the towering figure on the intellectual approach
to Pan-Africanism, Marcus Garvey planted the movement across the world, wherever people
of African descent are to be found. Garvey had immense influence on the political awakening
of all Africans and people of African descent, creating the first and last global mass
movement of Africans. In some measure the trans-Atlantic slave trade replicated the
experience of Africans – especially women and children – who were victims of the transSaharan slave trade and those taken into Arab bondage. The fundamental difference was that
the Europeans, apart from attempting conversion to Christianity, did not succeed in
denationalising the Africans taken to the western Diaspora (Caribbean, North/South America
or Europe). In contrast, as seen in the Sudan today and graphically illustrated in Darfur
(where the conscientisation around African identity is recent and its future uncertain),
Africans in the eastern Diaspora ceased to be Africans and became Arabs. It is the loss of
identity under the Arab system, which renders the reconnection of the African eastern
Diaspora in the Gulf, Arabia, etc, with Africa a major cultural challenge with deep
psychological implications.
Within Pan-Africanism, it is Esedebe who noted that after the 1945 5th Pan-African Congress
there was a shift.
Up till then, the Pan African movement concerned itself with the problems of
Africans and their descendants in different parts of the globe. But despite the adjective
Pan-African, the movement driving this period was not truly Pan-African in
membership. For every practical purpose Arab north Africa remained outside the pale
of Pan-Africanism. (Esedebe 1994, 229)
7
This shift was largely due to the influence of Nkrumah who served as Secretary General of
the 5th Congress. Under his leadership the Pan-African movement become ‘continentalist’
and geographic by definition. North Africa was admitted into the movement, without a quid
pro quo of sub-Saharan black Africa being admitted into the Arab League. Nkrumah’s
emissaries attended the Roundtable Conference in Khartoum in March 1965, on peace in
South Sudan. At Sirte, in Libya, at the 4th Extraordinary Summit of the OAU in September
1999, Ghaddafi, Head of State of Libya, presented a draft charter proposing the establishment
of the United States of Africa, with one government, one leader, a single army, one currency,
one central bank and one parliament making the laws for the entire continent, to be in place
by 2000. What was adopted was a compromise outside the Libyan leader’s hopes. One of the
major problems of the OAU/AU has been the non-payment of dues by member states. In
order to keep the organisation afloat, some members have paid more than others. There are
many reasons for the arrears. One possibly, is a lack of commitment to African
nationalism/Pan-Africanism, to which the organisation owed its creation. The OAU/AU has
generally failed to invigorate Pan-Africanism/African Nationalism. This may be due to the
perception of the organization as a neo-colonial institution. In any event, it is clear that
OAU/AU has failed to meet the aspirations of Africans at the grass-root level both at home
and abroad, for strong unity, international status, respect and auto-development. Too often it
was a side show with the real decisions being made elsewhere. It has been unable to safe
guard the interests of African nationals seeking green pastures in Europe. It has members,
who owed their allegiance between Arabia and, they would say, Africa.
Cultural unity and the Arab model
Cultural solidarity within the Arab League stressed the concept of a single Arab nation. This
nation looked back to the ancient Arab empires of the Umayyads and the Abbasids, noting
that Arabs had ‘civilised’ Europe in the Middle Ages. Such a cultural collective for subSaharian Africa was promoted by Cheik Anta Diop in his work on the cultural unity of black
Africa. Indeed, it is astonishing that little serious effort has been made to establish a
culturally based African League/Nation, given the respect accorded Diop and his
conclusions, the basic premises of which had been advanced by 1885, if not earlier, by the
Haitian, Antenor Firmin in his book published in 1885, entitled ‘The equality of the human
races’.
.
The premise in this article for the creation of an African League is axed on the inability of
either the Arab League or the OAU/AU to resolve issues affecting those of African descent in
the Afro-Arab borderlands and north of the Sahara, within its membership, in countries such
as Sudan. Given this reality, the logical progression is towards the creation of an African
League. This League would be a culturally based organisation, first and foremost, acting in
tandem, where necessary, with the Arab League, to realise the unity of the Arab and African
nations, on a basis of mutual respect. It is proposed that the AU subsist as a forum for the
Afro-Arab civilisation dialogue. At present, Africans in their millions are exposed to brutal
Arab racism in the form of genocide, without remedy by way of official solutions from the
OAU/AU, to the age-old problems of marginalisation, slavery and their consequences, which
have persisted for over a millennium, which constitutes the ‘Arab Project’ in Africa. The
death of over two million in the long conflict in southern Sudan is proof of this.
Presently, the AU finds itself unable to guarantee the safety and security of its African
constituency in north Africa, as distinct from its Arab constituency in north Africa. Arab
north Africans do not depend on the AU for protection and instead turns to the Arab League.
8
The Sudan is an illustration of a situation which is glaringly inequitable for its marginalised
African population that is dependent on the largesse of Khartoum. There has been little fresh
thinking on how best to achieve the unity of all Africans, both within and without Africa in
these times. What reflections there have been, tend to critique the existing situation and seek
to innovate the same. What is required now is new ‘thinking outside the box’, not grasping at
old straws and soft options. For the first time, the issues of the borderlands is being addressed
from the African point of view, and not as a legacy of the Euro-Arab decolonisation
arrangements. The realities on the ground, such as the war in South Sudan which began in
1955, were not addressed by the Founding Fathers of the OAU. In rethinking that situation,
new dynamisms should come into play. Too many lives have been lost to allow the area to
fall from view. Besides Sudan is a case study for the borderlands in general. Some wish to
impose the old approach, to ignore the issues hoping that they will go away and that the area
should be ‘off limits’ and not be discussed. This is the traditional approach of the OAU/AU‘hear no evil, see no evil, do no evil’.
There is much information available in situ about what has happened in South Sudan. Darfur
developments can be tracked daily, as can those in other parts of the Sudan, such as Nubia.
News availability is a recent development. Because of the distortions and silencing of
history, Africans have, in the past, chosen to not interest themselves in the problems of this
part of Africa. Indeed it was only in February 2009 that the AU appointed its High-Level
Panel on Darfur, which concluded that ‘Africa has no choice but to assume a leadership role
with respect to the Sudan, it being “a bridge between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa”’.
The High-Level Panel declared that the Sudan ‘is Africa’s crisis and, as such, Africa has a
duty to help the people of Sudan to achieve a lasting solution’. It took the body dedicated to
continentalism, some 35 years to arrive at a conclusion southern Sudanese nationalists, such
as Aggrey Jardan, had reached, through blood, before the OAU was born ( The Sudan Mirror,
10th September 2007, 21 ).
African research by Africans
The African presence in north Africa and the borderlands was a blind area, especially in
Western scholarship. This does not explain why today the area should continue to be the
subject of conspiracy theories, on-going rumours of slavery, genocide, war crimes and crimes
against humanity. By now African scholars should have visited the area for research. The
ruins of ancient Ghana lie under the sands of present day Mauritania. In Mali museum
artefacts can be found lying on the ground in places such as Djenne. This general void in
information about the past leaves Africans in general ignorant about a part of their patrimony,
to such an extent as to seriously weaken their ability to make informed decisions as regards
their own destiny.
This is changing. Few people from the borderlands who are of African descent, have spoken
out or written about Arab racism. This has been observed in South Sudan today, where the
war went on too long. Ignoring the issues will not make them go away. Presumably this is
due to the effects of denationalisation and because Africans believed that the situation there
was preordained and irrevocable. Outside influences will seek to continue the distortions of
history. There are notable exceptions, such as Garba Diallo, Jibril Abdelbagi, Jalal
Muhammed Hashim and Adwok Nyaba. They come from the area and have opened up their
world to African field researchers. Southern Sudanese have borne the brunt of Arab
expansion southwards into east Africa and the Horn in the last hundred years and more.This
burden has now shifted to Somalia. Because forced entry was blocked via Southern Sudan
9
and northern Uganda, Arabia is coming via Somalia, via the coastal route. Few from the area
have taken their experience to the global African community. Gregory. A. Pirio’s book ‘The
African Jihad’ published in 2007, details how the Bashir Government and Al Queda opened
up Somalia for regime change by using violence and Islamic fundamentalism.
Article 2.9 of the CPA puts the articulation of foreign policy both for Khartoum and Juba in
the hands of the Government of National Unity (GoNU) in Khartoum during the period of
transition. This left the International Liaison Offices of the Government of South Sudan
(GoSS) around the world inaudible and inactive. They are silent about the realities of South
Sudan and the other marginalised areas in the Sudan. From inquiry, it appears that GoSS has
little appetite or has been dissuaded from Africanism. Here GoSS, having fought Khartoum
to a standstill, does an about turn, to implement the traditionaI diplomacy of appeasement
with Khartoum. Apparently it has little confidence in Africans in general and their ability to
pursue their own interests. GoSS cannot be counted on to accept responsibility for the
international articulation of the problems of the borderlands after the referendum in 2011, if
that point is reached. To those outside the area, the peculiarities of the borderland experience
are difficult to understand. In part they are explained by what is well known in Western postslavery societies as ‘post-traumatic stress disorder syndrome’.
The Sudan’s relations with its neighbours
From the Khartoum government’s side, Al Turabi, the spiritual mentor of Omar Bashir in the
early years of Bashir’s administration, is often quoted as saying: ‘We want to Islamise (black)
America and Arabise Africa’ (Nyaba 2002). The Sudan has been active in destabilising its
neighbours, such that its sincerity about the pursuit of peace must be questioned. Nyaba states
‘ … that the Arab “threat” to Black Africa is real. It’s potential increases as you move up the
African map from the south’ (2002, 47).
Despite Sudan Second Vice-President Taha’s pleas in September 2010 at the General
Assembly in New York for the lifting of sanctions imposed by the West, due to Sudan’s
support for terrorism, the extent of Khartoum’s duplicity, in pursuit of the Arab Project of
Islamisation and Arabisation, is exposed in Mareike Schomerus’ (2007) study of the Lord’s
Resistance Army (LRA), which was recruited by Khartoum to become one of the Sudan’s
pro-government armed groups. The LRA obtained supplies and assistance from Khartoum in
return for the overthrow of the Government in Kampala lead by Y.Museveni, attacking the
Ugandan Army and the Southern Sudanese liberation movement, the Sudan Peoples
Liberation Movement/Army ( SPLM/A ), as well as destabilising the Democratic Republic of
Congo and the Central African Republic, as a prelude to the Arabisation and Islamisation of
these two countries. From 1994, LRA Commander Kony and his deputy Otti were regular
visitors to Khartoum and had an official residence in Juba. During attacks, LRA fighters were
seen leading the way, followed by a second wave of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF). During
the long years of war many factions and groups were fighting in the South Sudan bush, many
led by warlords supported by Khartoum. The terrain of LRA activities is proceeding deeper
and deeper into black Africa.
From the records available on the establishment of the OAU in 1963/1964, it appears that the
Founding Fathers did not understand the realities of the borderlands and the war which
started in South Sudan in 1955. Although the inviolability of sovereignty was a hallowed
tenet in the early days of the OAU, it was only after the Darfur conflict escalated in 2003
with massive loss of life, that the AU put boots on the ground in Darfur. Prior to that the
10
South Sudan conflict was said to be an issue for the Arab League, of which Sudan was a
member. The OAU obliged, turning a blind eye to the atrocities going on in South Sudan.
The Arab League never showed any inclination to stop the fighting. Because of history,
racism and prejudice, conflicts involving Africans in the borderlands never earned military
intervention by the Arab world. The Comprehensive Peace Agreement would not have been
signed if conflict resolution had remained in the hands of the Arab League and the OAU.
New initiatives, such as Renaissance theory and Afrocentric social and human science
(Nabudere 2007) are aimed at repositioning the African people in the world, to reclaim their
African heritage that has been denied, stolen and plundered in order to arrive at African
nationalism. Seen from such perspective, a thorough exposure of the various strands which
constitute the Sudan picture needs to be analysed, to find out what lessons can be learnt. Van
Sertima, in explaining the rejection of Diop’s doctoral thesis (Nabudere 2007, 10) stated that
this was because it ran ‘… counter to all that had been taught in Europe for two centuries
about the origin of civilisation’. Where previous African understandings had been based on
borrowings from European scholarship, new approaches and challenges need to be vigorously
pursued. All indication are that the Youth will have to realize this, since their Elders are tired
and caught up in ‘conventional diplomacy’.
Conclusions
The late John Garang de Mabior (2008) opted for a ‘New Sudan’ with its place in Africa and
the world, coming out strongly for a unity of Africans south of the Sahara. His African
Nation concept was to be an ideological weapon to arm the African youth. He asked :‘Are all parts of continental Africa parts of this African Nation? Arabia has its own
Nation incorporated in the Arab League. Do we want in our African Nation people
belonging to another Nation? The time has come for the African youth to determine
who will lead the national movement’. (Bankie and Mchombu eds 2007, 214)
Prah (2006, 230), in his discursive reflection on nationalism in a substantial work about what
he terms ‘The African Nation’, defines this as follows: ‘I speak of and mean nationalism,
based on the unity of Africans as a whole – Pan Africanism.’ Prah is of the view that the
states in Africa are stillborn and will never be viable. He refers to the work of the Egyptian,
Samir Amin, towards the achievement of the Arab Nation, which organisational framework is
represented by the Arab League. Prah opts for a unity of Africans based on the African
Diasporas, plus sub-Saharan Africa. This article promotes the African Nation based on the
black cultural foundation of Africa south of the Sahara, plus the African Diaspora in the east
(Gulf States, Arabia, etc) and the African Diaspora in the west (America, Caribbean, Europe,
etc.).
B.F.Bankie, Windhoek, Namibia, January 2011
References
Bankie, B.F. 1995. Pan-Africanism or continentalism? African Opinion Series
Number 4. Cape Town: Harp Publications
11
Diakite, S. 2006. Racial prejudice and inter-ethnic conflicts: The case of the AfroArab borderlands in the western Sahel. In Racism in the global African experience,
ed. Cape Town: CASAS.
Esedebe, P.O. 1964. Pan-Africanism: The idea and movement, 1776–1991.
Washington, DC: Howard University Press.
Firmin, A. 2002.The equality of the races. Urbana and Chicago: The University of
Illinois Press.
Garang, J.D. 2008. Pan-Africanism and African nationalism: Putting the African
nation in context – the case of Sudan. In Pan-Africanism/African nationalism:
Strengthening the unity of Africa and its Diaspora, ed. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press
Hashim, J.M. 2004. To be or not to be: Sudan at the crossroads. Unpublished paper.
Hashim, J.M. 2007. The policies of de-Nubianization in Egypt and Sudan: An ancient
people on the brink of extinction. Tinabantu Journal of African National Affairs
3(1).Cape Town:CASAS.
Laya, D. 2005. Soudanais ‘sans Dieu ni maitre’: Esclavage et traite trans-Saharienne
dans le Soudan Senegalo-Nigero-Tchadien, avant 1800. In Reflections on Arab-led
slavery of Africans, ed. Cape Town: CASAS.
Nabudere, D.W. 2007. Cheik Anta Diop: The social sciences, humanities, physical
sciences and transdisciplinarity. International Journal of African Renaissance Studies
volume(issue). Pretoria: UNISA.
Nyaba, P.A. 2002. The Afro-Arab conflict in the 21st century. A Sudanese viewpoint.
Tinabantu Journal of African National Affairs 1(1). Cape Town: CASAS.
Nyaba, P.A. 2007. What is African liberation? South Sudan Post, November 2007.
Juba: Centre for Documentation and Advocacy.
Pirio,G.A. 2007. The African Jihad - Bin Laden’s quest for the Horn of Africa.
Trenton, USA. The Red Sea Press.
Prah, K.K. 2006. The African nation: The state of the nation. Cape Town: CASAS AS
Schomerus, M. 2007. The Lord’s Resistance Army in Sudan: A history and overview.
Geneva, Small Arms Survey.
Sibanda, S. 2008. Pan-Africanism and Afrikan nationalism: Putting the Afrikan nation
in context. In Pan-Africanism, African nationalism: Strengthening the unity of Africa
and its Diaspora, ed. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press.
Simone, S. 2005. Addressing the consequences of Arab enslavement of Africans: The
impasse of post colonial cultural relativism. In Racism in the global African
experience, ed. Cape Town: CASAS
12