The 69th Anniversary of the Torit Uprising! South Sudanese must be authors of their own history
Hon. Atem Garang Dekuek
By Hon. Atem Garang D. Dekuek, Juba, South Sudan
Sunday, August 18, 2024 (PW) — The Torit Armed Uprising, of the 18th of August 1955, marked the beginning of an organised and dedicated war of national liberation. It was a military translation and replacement of passive, sporadic, isolated, uncoordinated, and futile tribal resistances that were here and there instigated against the colonial forces, throughout the era of the slave trade and slavery 1821-1898, and during the period of the Angelo-Egyptian Condominium Rule 1898-1955. From the date of the Torit Uprising, the future of the people of South Sudan was decided by the brave young men in the Equatoria Corps who set alight the torch of the long liberation through military organised struggle.
In my view, it is a patriotic obligation for the present and next generations to annually commemorate this historic day, and should be christened as ‘The Army Day’; the initiators of that nationalistic Uprising of the 1955, without flinch of doubt, are heroes who should be remembered as pioneers of organised and meaningful armed struggle to free people of South Sudan from the bondage of the Arabised Sudanese domination. Also, the bravery, heroism and patriotism that propelled these young men of the Torit Armed Uprising deserve glorification and veneration from the present and future generations of the people of this country for which they had dearly paid for its freedom.
The institutions mandated to preserve our heritage are expected to exert dedicated efforts in documentation of the sequences of the circumstances that motivated and triggered the events of the 18th of August 1955, and the aftermath events. These events should be narrated and recorded from a historical perspective of South Sudanese, especially from the survivors and contemporaries of the incidents. The areas, sites, and spots, where the leaders, planners, implementers, and collaborators of the Torit Uprising were massacred or executed, are supposed to be identified, demarcated, fenced and monuments erected. Such spots and sites are to be gazetted and classified as national historical sites.
All the individuals who participated or falsely accused to have collaborated in the Uprising, their names should be inscribed on memorial structures on the above-suggested sites, where they were executed. Or otherwise, erect a commemorative structure in a dedicated piece of land in Torit town where the names of those who were killed in action, executed, imprisoned, and those who survived and continued keeping the revolution torch burning until it was handed to Anya-Nya in 1963.
Torit Armed Uprising is considered by others to have failed in achieving its original goals; this is untrue and historically misleading. The then ebbing colonial influence along the Nile basin, did not give any consideration to what the people of South Sudan were saying; because it was in South Sudan where the colonial forces were seriously resisted and battled, and many British and Egyptian officers and soldiers were killed; that included a governor of a province. Thus, Torit Uprising, in the eyes of the colonial and their inheritors of the state-machinery, was a mere ‘mutiny’ and ‘rebellion’ against an established authority; so, all methods were used to physically exterminate the soldiers and psychologically intimidate the civilians.
However, the goal and objective of Uprising, in my view, was the initiation of a long war of national liberation; that was an aggregation of the various isolated tribal resistances, which was magnified by the Anya-Nya and finally concluded by the SPLA in 2005. The spirit of the Uprising continued in spite, of the then impossibility to execute it in all the military units across South Sudan, due to many reasons such as lack of effective coordination related to poor communications and inferior military positions the South Sudanese were occupying in the army at the time.
Torit Armed Uprising was justified, both in action and intention, never a failure. There were three major factors that had contributed for continuous burning of the spirit of the Uprising until the formation of the Anya-Nya in 1963. The first factor was the will and determination of the soldiers who were dispersed from Torit and from the other towns, they vehemently rejected all the appeals and threats to surrender to the inheritors of the colonial authority in South Sudan; they kept roaming in the forests of Eastern and Western banks of the Nile in Equatoria province, conducting sporadic attacks here and there; until 1963.
The second factor was the brutality of the Arabised Sudanese authority and its forces, who did not see any political or citizenry rights been claimed by the ‘infidels’ and ‘missionary-brain-washed puppets’ who cannot freely think for themselves. The government policy of revenge-based, was so ruthless that all those who surrendered or captured were either court-martialed and executed or imprisoned and exiled to Suakin and Port Sudan on the Red Sea coast, in Northern Sudan, where most of them died under harsh conditions and hard work of extracting salt from the Red Sea; a treatment that was equal to slaves’ status. The hatred exhibited by the new Arabised authority in Sudan, confirmed proved what South Sudanese anticipated from the Arabs; that they would not see South Sudanese as equal citizens, based on the culture and relations of the slave trade and slavery era.
The third factor was the new policy formulated by the independent Sudan, that the country was officially an Arab-Islamic nation, therefore all citizens within it, must be Arabised and Islamised by force and that the rebels must be eradicated forcefully. That policy further convinced the freedom fighters to continue propagating for the cause they initiated the Armed Uprising, until the day the people would join them, which was achieved in 1963.
Our history must be written by the people of this country, and our heroes must get their deserved glorification and veneration; while all those who collaborated with the enemies of the people of South Sudan be exposed and ashamed. May God bless South Sudan and its people!
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