When “the Southern Question” Becomes a True Insult to South Sudanese
6 min readBy Deng Koch Diing, Kampala
The word ‘’Southern question’’ was used to refer to question asked by ruling elites in Khartoum in early 1980s when after 1955 revolution, South Sudanese were granted a regional autonomy in the Addis Ababa Accord that ended 17 years of Anya Nya One war.
However, even after the Addis Ababa agreement, a group of South Sudanese who renamed themselves Anya Nya Two afterward remained in the bush fighting against the Khartoum government, yet the regional autonomy was given.
The Sudanese government employed another trick of silencing rebellion in the South. They created the High Executive Council to which a South Sudanese could become the President of autonomous region and at the same time second vice President of the Republic of Sudan. Nonetheless, there continue to be wars.
The question from Khartoum was: what do Southerners really want? Because it was a vexing question, the ruling Arab’s elites by then began publicizing it to be known as ‘’the Southern question’’.
Whether Eastern, Western or Southern question, that didn’t bother South Sudanese though the Arabs thought that they had done enough in all their promises. Nevertheless, there were no guarantees that all those promises would hold.
For instance, there was no separate army that would protect the constitution of that autonomous region. Anya Nya One fighters who responded to the Addis Ababa Accord were forced to retire prematurely.
Gen. Joseph Lagu, the head of the promised autonomous region was stripped off from Sudan’s military ranks and files and he became an executive President who was not a commander in Chief of any army in his jurisdiction.
It didn’t take long before the agreement collapsed. Jafar Numeiri issued his Republican Order of June 5th 1982, dissolving the High Executive Council and divide the South into three mini-ghost regions: Greater Equatoria, Greator Upper Nile, and Greater Bhar El Ghazal.
That marked the demised of the Addis Ababa Accord and the birth of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) under Dr. John Garang in 1983.
What do Southerners really want?
After the Numeiri’s republican decree on June 1982, the collapse of 1972 agreement caused a great exodus of civil population in the South. Students who were in schools relinquished their studies to join the war of liberation leading to formation of SPLM/SPLA war that finally liberated South Sudan.
We finally congratulates ourselves for hard won independence in our Capital and displayed our first constitution.
During the declaration of independence on 9th July 2011, we raised a single flag like any other nation can do, sank our national Anthem for the first time while giving thank to God for his protection in a very emotional phrase in the first paragraph “Oh God we glorify you………”
We cried with tears of joy knowing that our desires were fulfilled. What we were remaining with was to confess our sins and pray God for our future.
It didn’t take us long before we stamps out our guest for a better nation. I, as someone who had been to the battlefield in this conflict and saw all the brutalities of the current war, it can be the right time now to ask what do Southerners really want?
While we all agree that there can be errors in every political system, our reactions should not go beyond to an extent that it failed to magnified two things which are the individual interest and national goal.
Individual interest make massive mobilization to a wider level that people can reconsider their decisions later when much has been lost because it put that first desire disregarding the grass root. Without the innocent people where will politics got those that it will use? That regret became a real after the Bor Massacre which 85000 innocent civilians die in Riek’s guest to take over power from rebel leadership.
A national goal always defined its route through the civil population and the clear example is when we spoke clearly in 2011 in a self determination referendum in order to secure our land, resources and establish a system of laws that reflect the cultures of our 64 tribes.
Now it should have been time to focus on economic independence.
Why the Khartoum government must be supportive of current war
Last week, a leading figure in the National congress party Dr. Ghazai Salahdin was quoted by the media as having said that “the situation in South Sudan is boiling, and when it reach it brim, a stronger united Sudan never created before will emerge.”
Salahdin’s comments is just one of thousands ill statements made by Sudanese writers thinking that South Sudan will one time seal it borders back to Sudan, that campaign for unity to the Arabs is coaxed by four main interests:-
1- The culture shock which emerged after the interactions of those who happen to brought up in Khartoum and are only familiar to the Arab cultures, the Sudan’s government is reasoning that when such messes cause a culture shock, the mess which will say that South Sudan was well off in a former Sudan may emerge thus taking them back to unity.
2- A claim that was championed in the Bashir’s unity campaign in which he said that if South Sudan secedes, it’s going to be a weak and a failed state, a desire to justify that prophecy is what the Arab’s senior government official still think, but even in the most awkward situations in the world where there are no government systems, a demarcated sovereign land cannot be annexed to a different nation with excuse of it becoming a fail state, Somalia would have been annexed to its nearest neighbor, Afghanistan would have been a annexed to Pakistan and so on.
3- Another reason could be the jealousy caused by the en-rooting of oil pipeline from Sudan’s port to Kenya instead, the main interest surrounding all the dooms in Sudan are about oil, they could support rebels just to get a huge share of South Sudan’s oil, the dream seems to be saying: – give up your oil and there will be peace, that is true for other countries world over, big nations like U.S and China could only bend to whoever that promise the awarding of contracts to its corporations.
4- The issue of National debts which the South has long been refusing. The national congress party still doubles it even to a larger figure which includes the debt of some countries cancelled before.
For the republic of Sudan, the Southern question is now at its best. However, South Sudan’s failure to avoid that insult has by far make it a true insult.
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