Leadership, Nation-building and War in South Sudan

The Problems of Statehood and Collective Will

Sonja Theron

• Verlag: Bloomsbury Academic
• Jahr: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780755622153
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Politics & International Relations
• Thema: Peace & Global Development

For over fifty years, the people of South Sudan fought for the right to be citizens of an independent nation-state. When this goal was finally achieved, however, it quickly became evident that the South Sudanese nation was not nearly as cohesive as hoped. The result has been a catastrophic civil war. Spanning South Sudan's nation-building struggle from its inception up until the current civil war, this book challenges the notion that the continued violence of this process can be reduced to either identity difference or the fault of individual leaders. Rather, it uses the leadership process to understand the complex progressions and relationships that have characterised South Sudan's nation-building trajectory. The book argues that the core driving force behind the current conflict in South Sudan can be found not in ethnicity, the "resource curse" or power struggle, but in a set of destructive relationships that have fueled violence and oppression in the country for the better part of a century. This cyclical leadership process has entrapped the country in an increasingly destructive and contradictory nation-building process that continues to spiral and disintegrate.

Part One

Origins: The Southern Sudanas People, Polity and ‘Problem’
(c. 1821–1983)

1

Conquest and Colonization

Introduction

The question of South Sudan’s troubled journey towards nationhood must start with its first encounters with the modern state. As a frontier region to various early Sudanic states, there was little driving the formation of a strong, centralized state. In fact, the region became a haven to escape the state (Johnson 2013: 39). Diverse communities and groups lived within different governance systems based on varying social, economic and geographic needs – from decentralized, loosely knit groups governed by social norms and traditional practices, to more centralized kingdoms with hierarchical political structures (Johnson 2011a: 11–13; Thomas 2015: Ch. 1). But, with the encroachment of the modern state in the form of Turco-Egyptian conquest in 1820, Mahdist rule from 1883 to 1898 and Anglo-Egyptian colonialism from 1899 to 1956, a tension arose between identity, later nationhood and the state.

This tension was born out of opportunities the colonial state provided to elites and the restrictions it placed on the populace. It manifested in the way groups and communities were defined and bounded for political purposes and in the way policies and institutions were developed in service of external powers. This is the origin of the fractured mutuality between leaders and followers in South Sudan, preventing the development of a social contract. Throughout this book, we will see how leaders within South Sudan have been steered more by their relationship with the ‘external’ than with their purported followers. The lack of influence between leaders and followers encourages the use of narrow identity markers to garner support. These narrow identity markers also find their origin in South Sudan’s early history.

Identity construction: The birth of ‘the other’

Sudan has variously been portrayed as a bridge or a frontier between the Arab and African world (Copnall 2014: 6–11; Nasong’o & Murunga 2005: 57–9; Sidahmed & Sidahmed 2005: 8). But to what degree is this a truthful representation of the Sudanese identity landscape? How did the complex social landscape of early Sudan, characterized by a multitude of overlapping and multilayered identities, come to be reduced to a binary story of north/south, Arab/African, Muslim/Christian? This dialectic narrative and its associated myth-building fuelled many of the perceptions that supported conflict and war between northern and southern Sudan. How and why was this dialectic formed, and what role did leadership play? Three key processes – migration and trade, slavery, and colonialism – interacted in complex ways, creating the foundation for this narrative.

First, migratory and trade patterns between today’s northern Sudanese Arabs and southern Sudanese Africans date back to the seventh century (Iyob & Khadiagala 2006: 22). Yet, as state power emerged, an increasingly distinctive Arab and Muslim identity was formed, in parallel with the Islamization of the state; political, spiritual and social legitimacy and power became intertwined with ‘Arab’ and Muslim identity (Deng 1995: 35–68; Johnson 2013: 38–9). Genealogies, often stretched or interrupted, were used to trace Islamic and Arabic heritage to build this legitimacy (Deng 1995: 40; Johnson 2013: 38).

Leadership was then determined through a process of prototype leadership. This leadership theory argues that group members who are seen to best represent the typical and most valued characteristics of the social identity are perceived to have more influence, through referent power and other social identification processes (Hogg 2001). Political and spiritual influence was given to those seen to represent the ‘ideal’ of the identity group. But the cost of this prototype leadership, as well as attempts to represent the ‘ideal’ Arab, was to create a false distinction between Arab and African. Also, while Arabic descent was used to signal social status, the racial distinction in Sudan was much more blurred due to intermarriage and migration (Idris 2005: 28). More importantly, it created a sense that one was superior to the other, with greater right to political power.

Slavery was another process that fuelled this distinction and hierarchy of identities. In 1963, William Deng and Joseph Oduhu, leaders of the Sudan African Closed Districts National Union (SACDNU) liberation movement, wrote:

It is unfortunate that half a century of Anglo-Egyptian rule did not succeed in dissipating the impressions left by the slave trade on Northern and Southern Sudanese alike; the former tend to regard themselves as born masters, and the latter surround themselves in a stockade of suspicion which has proved to be well founded.

Oduhu & Deng 1963: 11

Slavery began in northern Sudan when smaller kingdoms would raid hinterlands in the north, and to a limited degree the south, for slaves (Johnson 2011a: 2–3). As the state became more prominent, slave soldiers were used to exercise and maintain state power (Johnson 2011a: 3–4). At first, slavery was less clearly aligned with racial and religious distinctions, with Muslims also being enslaved (Idris 2005: 27–8). But this would shift as Islamic states used Shari’a law to distinguish ‘between “enslavable” infidels and those who belong to the umma’ (Iyob & Khadiagala 2006: 25) and non-Muslim territory became the raiding ground for slaves (Johnson 2013: 42).

Slavery’s legacy was a narrative of superiority in the north and oppression in the south. Those of African descent were freely referred to as ‘abeed’, meaning slave, well into the twentieth century (Deng 1995: 5; Copnall 2014: 24–5). Northern Arabs were seen as oppressors. They would be referred to as ‘Jallaba’, a term for Arabic traders that would evolve into a derogatory term for northerners as a whole (Young 2005: 536). This sense of ‘otherness’ between northern and southern groups was largely subjective. Northerners of the twentieth century are more likely to have descended from slaves than southerners (Deng 1995: 5–6). Those who suffered the fate of slavery were often assimilated into northern Sudanese culture through conversion to Islam and the learning of Arabic (Sikainga 2000: 35). As a result, former slaves held a complex and ambivalent identity that shared with other non-Arab groups a history of oppression and discrimination, but also provided them with greater opportunities than other said groups (Sikainga 2000: 35). As one respondent indicated, ‘those taken into slavery became elites themselves’ (Interview F 2017).

The same challenges of subjectivity that exist between north and south exist between different identity groups in the south. The various identity groups in southern Sudan are diverse in political, social and economic structure. Colonial structures attempted to generate distinct lines between these groups using colonial ethnic interpretations (e.g. pastoralist vs sedentary groups, centralized vs decentralized groups, ‘warrior’ groups, administrative groups, etc.) (Collins 1962: 4–5; Johnson 2011a: 12–15, 17–18). In reality, however, the distinctions between these groups are not as clear-cut as colonial administrators perceived.

For example, while ethnic groups are often distinguished by their economic activities (e.g. Dinka, Nuer and Murle as pastoralists and others as agrarian), there are those within the traditionally pastoralist groupings that also engage in agricultural practices (Thomas 2015: Ch. 1). Another distinction is that of geography or language. Certain groups were largely associated with certain territories or regions, and remain so (Johnson 2013: 54; Interview B 2017; Thomas 2015: Ch. 1). The previously fluid territorial boundaries between these groups were often arbitrarily assigned by the colonial government, and people resettled to make these regions more homogenous (Justin & De Vries 2019: 66). Furthermore, the word ‘tribe’ itself (often used to identify these various ethnic groups) has no clear equivalent in South Sudanese languages (Thomas 2015: Ch. 1).

As such, fluid identities within Sudan as a whole were crystallized and demarcated through a series of processes related to migration, state formation, conflict and contestation. The dominant narrative of slavery and oppression has thereby come to define the shared memory and history of southern Sudan, which would go on to play a central role in constructing the southern identity. At the same time, similar processes at the local level were embedding identity distinctions that would create a fractal-like identity landscape, prone to conflict at multiple levels (community, regional and national).

Statehood in early Sudan

Modernist nationalism scholars view nationhood and statehood as closely interlinked. Gellner (1983) argued that nations primarily emerged out of the modern industrial process, while other scholars linked these modernization processes closely with the state (Hearn 2006: 74–80). In short, it was the state that gave birth to the nation. The modernization processes of mass media, language, education, civil society, modern militaries and bureaucracies generated a sense of cohesion and shifted the relationship between government and people.¹ Yet the state-formation process in Sudan tells a different story.

A fundamental challenge for future nation-building in Sudan would be finding an aspect of Sudanese society which would act as the centre of gravity for political thought, consciousness and action. This is where agency is very important. In a complex society such as Sudan, leaders, as the managers of meaning, can influence the narrative that drives a society in one direction or the other. However, they are also restricted by changing situations and existing sentiments amongst the population. The trajectory of state formation in Sudan will illustrate that leaders often centred their ideologies for the future Sudanese state on narrow political interests rather than broader societal goals. This stemmed from an inherent lack of mutuality between a very small intelligentsia and a large, diverse populace. One of these centres of gravity was religion, particularly Islam, which was able to transcend ethnic groups, but only in the north (Khalid 2003: 40). As a result, a significant portion of the future Sudanese state was excluded from the foundational ideology of that state. The future leadership of Sudan would embed rather than shift this ideology. For now, a brief overview of early state formation processes is illuminating.

Sudan’s early history of statehood entails the presence of several smaller kingdoms and states. Through commerce, exchange and migratory patterns, many of these states’ leaders converted to Islam and began to adopt Islamic legal principles (Johnson 2013: 38). The Funj kingdom in particular (located in central Sudan) was one of the first to institutionalize Islam as part of the state, also beginning a long tradition of identity-based politics (Idris 2005: 26). At the same time, a distinction emerged between states and their peripheries. Different legal frameworks, rights and social status were applied based on one’s territorial origins, generating different experiences and relationships with the state (Johnson 2013: 38–40). This ‘centre/periphery’ distinction would continue into the modern era, hindering the development of a social contract between state and citizen, and mutuality between leaders and the populace.

Southern Sudan, however, remained outside the reach of any state for much of its history, in large part due to the resistance provided by the Shilluk and Dinka (Johnson 2013: 41). It was only with the conquests of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries that this began to change. Prior to becoming an independent state, the conquest and centralization of state control in Sudan took the form of three key phases. The first was the Turco-Egyptian conquest that lasted from 1821 to 1885, when it was replaced by the Mahdist government of 1885 to 1898. Both governments had very little presence in what is South Sudan today (Arnold & LeRiche 2013: 9). Yet, the Turco-Egyptian regime reached further into southern Sudan than any of the previous Sudanic states, opening the door to greater economic exploitation and slave raiding, and setting the foundation for a north/south divid...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Dedication
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part 1 Origins: The Southern Sudan as People, Polity and ‘Problem’ (c. 1821–1983)
• 1 Conquest and Colonization
• 2 Independence and Rebellion
• Part 2 The War Continues: The Fight for Nation and State (1983–2002)
• 3 War and New Leadership
• 4 Inner Turmoil
• Part 3 Independence and Civil War: Building a State, Forgetting a Nation (2002–15)
• 5 Negotiating and Implementing Peace
• 6 Freedom, Fragility and Fragmentation
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright