Political
Divorce a lesson for both the Sudan and the rest of Africa
By: Justin Ambago Ramba, UK
MAY 30/2010, SSN; The present day Sudan, with its
current borders like most of the countries in Africa only
came into existence as a creation of the colonial powers. In
their quest to control and exploit the continent the
Europeans divided the indigenous African kingdoms and
chiefdoms and replaced them with artificial borders that
only served the interests of the evil minded invaders. But
the local people who were mostly used by the colonizers as
proxy tools to weaken one another, didn’t have enough
opportunity to mix freely with the intension of forging a
truly unifying and common national identity and hence they
remained but to identify themselves as tribes and clans, to
which they continue to attach much pride.
Following the withdrawal of the European colonialist, the
continent of Africa woke up to the realities of its
artificial settings and structures. It found itself faced
with this huge task of forging a unified national identity,
as proposed by the fore-founders of Pan-Afrikanism, but as
time went by, this was never achieved, pushing the various
people of the continent to further identify themselves in
terms of their narrow ethnical origins and tribal
identities.
In the absence of homogeneity and the lack of laws to check
the wildly spreading fire of micro-nationalism and
regionalism, the real allegiance of Africans today is
largely turned towards their various tribes. Should the
status quo remain the same, our continent risks its only
remaining hope to make up for its dark history of slavery,
servitude and colonialism as clearly defined in the Pan
Afrikan movement principles. This in turn is likely to
endanger the noble dream of creating the “untied state of
Africa”. Even the big slogan of ONE AFRIKA, will soon find
itself consciously overtaken and replaced by a backward
journey where every tribe on the continent will find itself
going more inwards and toward its roots, origins and past
glories without appreciating the roles of the others who
share the same national borders. This trend as it continues
to dominate today’s Africa; it is slowly evolving into a
number one cancer and a great reason for concern.
Sudan clearly stands as an example of these artificially
created countries that has failed to maintain any peacefully
co-exist within its borders. In its five decades history of
civil wars, where religion, ideology and ethnicity were all
at conflict, this country by all standards demonstrates to
the world that there is more to geographical demarcations in
creating a harmonious nation.
Former Yugoslavia, the Balkans, and the old Soviet Union are
all examples that the human history has finally come to
openly acknowledge as a failed attempt, by those greedy
adventurers, emperors, tyrants and dictators in creating
artificial national boundaries based entirely on carving
geographical territories and forcing the inhabitants who are
at their best sworn in enemies and antagonists, into the
pretext of being one people.
History has brought us this far and we are now eyes
witnessing a fact that, after almost a century, the Sudan
state that was artificially created by the colonialist has
failed to be a success story. After it went through a five
decades civil war in the south, the country is now already
seven years into another separate war in Darfur (within what
is known as the political northern segment of the country).
Most Sudanese and especially so, the people of the south who
bore the main brunt of the sufferings that resulted from the
institutionalised marginalisation and the brutality of the
civil wars, have finally made it clear to those who have
conscience in the international community, that south Sudan
should not be left as such to pay for a crime which isn’t
its making.
The comprehensive peace agreement (CPA) came into existence
as a way forward to solve a humanitarian crisis which was
for long ignored. It also offers an opportunity for the
people of south Sudan who were practically forgotten for
half a century to come and take their rightful place as
fellow human beings and live side by side with others as
equal members of the human community. The plights of the
people of south Sudan which was once only treated as mere
statistics even in the most prestigious institutions that
traditionally pride themselves with the welfare of mankind
and international fraternity e.g. the united nations, the
African union......etc, must now be given the due attention.
The causes for the failure of unity and peaceful
co-existence between mankind at large are well demonstrated
in the endless debates that continue to take place in the
security council of the United Nations and the other
regional organisations. The African union, the Arab League
or even the much controversial international Islamic
conference are all aware of their own failures in the goals
they have so far set for themselves.
Many nations in different parts of the world are also
struggling with issues of how to maintain unity within their
borders. And to this end the Sudan, Africa’s giant of 1
million square miles, is no exception as it struggles in the
south, in Darfur and in the East. Although the reasons
leading to the complete failure of unity in the Sudanese
setting are many, however it is those ones created by the
elites, who despite their hard work in up-rooting
colonialism, unfortunately turned around to become even
worse than the colonizers. Their eyes and hearts went
straight to those evil luxuries used to be enjoyed by the
foreign rulers and they ended up doing exactly what the
colonialists did.
In most revolutions there are always those who find
themselves in the centre of events and it is not necessarily
that they are more revolutionary than the others. History
has it that all the Sudanese did put some form of resistance
against the colonialist and all the other foreign invaders.
But when it comes to writing the history books, they were
either written by the Europeans or their Arab counterparts.
Should we restrict ourselves to the Whiteman’s books; the
whole praise for the Sudanese revolution will continue to go
to Imam al Mahdi, although he was largely surrounded by men
who came mainly from Darfur, Kordofan and the different
parts of the south. This selected reference to the history
of the Sudan has very much contributed in stratifying the
Sudanese people and the way that the Sudan was governed
thereafter unfairly gave much credit to the people of the
north and al Mahdi and the al Mirghani families,
eventually sowing the seeds of the modern day Sudanese
political crisis.
Following the second world war, the Sudanese northern elites
were quick to exploit their better education and proximity
to Egypt, and they stood up as the only self proclaimed
group and went on to assign themselves the sole right to the
exclusion of others, and decided for the rest of the
country.
Without the mandate from the rest of the inhabitants of the
so-called 1 million square miles, and especially so the
people of south Sudan, the riveran Arab elites chose to
start the future of the Sudan on the wrong footing from the
very moment they assumed the right to not only monopolize
the negotiations with the colonial rulers on the future of
two distinctive parts of the Sudan, but also by declaring
themselves from there on to be the only rightful leaders of
a united, Arab and Islamic Sudan.
Of importance is the fact that until the last days of the
colonial rule in the Sudan, both the north and the south had
existed as two separate entities and were run under two
different administrative systems. The north by far had
already evolved distinctively from the south as a part of
Middle East, while the south by all standards remain up
to date an integral part of East Africa both in the
physical features of its people and their indigenous black
African cultures.
When the Sudan earned its self-rule in 1954, the northern
elites immediately declared themselves as the rightful
replacers of the colonial administration. Why do we think
they acted so? The answer is simple, for these supremacist
northern elites found themselves in a more favoured position
by both British and Egyptian authorities and as they were
the ones who negotiated the Self Rule, they only felt it
natural to marginalise the other Sudanese as people whose
roles in achieving the Sudanese independence dream could be
considered very secondary. Everything that followed from
there was a direct out-come of the northern elites’ greed
and today the country is more prepared to disintegrate into
several states than in any other time as a consequence of
their successive supremacists policies.
If the northern Sudanese riveran Arab elites missed the
opportunity to forge a multi-cultural and multi-ethnical
Sudan, for sure it offers an important lesson for the other
African countries which are at the moment struggling with
similar issues of national integration in their quest to
survive as a viable post colonial state. This also applies
very well, even to the people of south Sudan who are soon
expected to vote for their own state in January 2011, if
they are to go and establish a harmonious nation of their
own.
The world community and in particular the other African
countries which are scared by the possibility that the
imminent secession of south Sudan may fuel similar
sentiments in their own backyards must come to accept the
reality on the ground as far as the Sudanese politics is
concerned. The northern Arabs dominated the Sudanese central
government in Khartoum and are not in any position ready to
sacrifice their tight grips on the power in the centre in
any bid to create a fair power sharing by accommodating the
other Sudanese of black African origins be them from the
south, the west or the eastern parts of the country. This
being the case right now, then the dream to have a
harmonious united Sudan is as illusive now as it was in the
1890s.
If similar bitter and drastic outcomes to national problems
can be avoided in other African settlings, then those who
are today monopolizing the decision making in their
countries should learn a lesson or two from the Sudanese
experience. Africans elsewhere can do better by applying
inclusiveness in their governance system and to better work
hard to keep at bay the widespread malignant tribal
politics, nepotism, favouritism, and regionalism which is
right now eating up the roots of our common destiny. Africa
can only avoid what is happening today in the Sudan by
adopting true democracy where the rights of the minorities
are completely respected and protected by the law besides
the establishment of institutions that can stand the test of
time.
We in south Sudan are often ready to go mad at any one who
talks negatively of our intentions to secede come the 2011
referendum. However as mentioned somewhere earlier in this
article, we are also more than invited to learn from our
bitter realities of history that pitted us against the north
and where we are entrapped in an endless wars of survival.
The challenge that awaits us is how we as south Sudanese are
aspiring to govern and run our new independent nation come
2011 so that we don’t fall yet into the same mistakes that
we are now blaming on our northern fellows?
The way to our salvation don’t end only by achieving
independence, but we must be prepared fully to go an extra
mile to sever any connections with all the evil politics and
attitudes that some of us might have acquired from the
northern Arab’s. Marginalization and looking down on other
countrymen as a people whose roles in the revolution don’t
deserve recognition must never be allowed to be a part of
our new nation.
As some of our African neighbours are already getting
worried about their own backyards, like them we should also
start to think about how we are going to forge our own
national unity, having seen it failed in many nations,
including the Sudan which we are about to walk away from.
Much needs to be done and NOW, otherwise we are still
African’s and we may in less than a year’s time find out
ourselves going three hundred and sixty degree and back to
where we stated from.
Let us always remember that, when it comes to oppression,
neither its source nor the colour or religion of the
perpetuator matters. Oppression is oppression regardless of
whether they are carried out by a white, black, brown, Arab,
African, Muslim, Christian or even a family member for that
matter. Remember that as you cannot tolerate it so are the
others.
The African Union’s position in trying to maintain the
existing borders of Africa is understandable; however the
organisation needs to do more in realising democratic
transformations in the continent. The out-dated policy of
decreeing blanket judgements against political divorces in
member countries especially in the case of the Sudan are
doomed to fail as it will neither guarantee any happiness
nor will it save the country’s political marriage from being
tainted by endless human sufferings.
Those politicians and leaders who wrongly assume that they
can save their political marriages by opposing political
divorces in other countries are in fact doing the wrong
thing. They may possibly save their own political marriages
by refraining from the policies that shattered their
neighbours’ unions. May be they need to listen more to their
partners or provide more love and inclusiveness in their own
countries. It is all about how one continues to make
political union appealing to both sides which makes it work.
Forced marriages don’t work.
On the other hand when the time comes for the two separate
Sudanese states to go apart if that becomes what the
southern voters opt for in the 2011 referendum, they must
preferably both do so in a peaceful manner. They should as
well do their level best to start a better life in their new
settings, by making the best use of their bitter
experiences, lest them go on into an endless binary fission.
It may not please some people should the Sudan proceed to
become like the former Yugoslavia, where both the north and
the south goes again dividing yet into smaller states, a
very likely scenario if the current stubborn and arrogant
leaderships on both sides do not part with their old
attitudes of political grandiosity and supremacist
tendencies wherever they find themselves. As for the
continent of Africa, we must understand that unity has a
price. And unless we pay for it, we can never have it.
Quote: “We
spoke and acted as if, given the opportunity for
self-government, we would quickly create utopias. Instead
injustice, even tyranny, is rampant."Julius
Kambarage Nyerere, as quoted in David Lamb's The Africans,
New York 1985.
Dr. Justin Ambago Ramba, M.B, B.Ch, D.R.H, MD. Secretary
General of the United South Sudan Party (USSP). The party
that stands for the independence of South Sudan. Can be
reached at eitherjustinramba@doctors.org.uk or justinramba@aol.co.uk