The Southern Question and the Long Road from Subordination to Political Agency
South Sudan’s independence on 9 July 2011 emerged from a long struggle over identity, political representation, territory, security, resources and the right of a people to determine the institutions under which they would live. Its achievement cannot be understood solely through the final years of the liberation war, the negotiations that produced the Comprehensive Peace Agreement or the referendum in which the people of Southern Sudan overwhelmingly chose independence.
Those events grew out of experiences spanning generations. Southern communities had confronted conquest, enslavement, administrative exclusion, unequal incorporation, cultural pressure, economic marginalisation and repeated failures to honour political agreements. Through resistance, negotiation, organisation and adaptation, they gradually developed a shared political consciousness.
Alongside oppression and armed struggle, this history encompasses political thought, community resilience, constitutional aspirations and diplomatic engagement. It records the search for a just relationship among peoples brought together within a state without having negotiated the terms of their coexistence. This volume begins with those historical foundations.
It examines how the lands and peoples of what later became South Sudan were incorporated into a political order centred along the Nile Valley and governed largely from Khartoum. That incorporation was not founded upon a freely negotiated constitutional compact among equal communities. It emerged through military conquest, slave and ivory trading, taxation, forced recruitment, imperial competition, colonial boundary-making, and administrative decisions taken far from the societies most affected by them.
These processes connected the South to the wider Sudanese state under unequal conditions. In many Southern communities, the earliest encounters with state power involved extraction, coercion and military authority, with little provision for public services or political representation.
Southern peoples responded by defending their communities, protecting land and cattle, negotiating with advancing powers, forming alliances, resisting military expeditions and migrating in response to danger. They also preserved systems of authority that long preceded the modern state. Their responses varied according to time, place, leadership and circumstance.
Some communities fought; others negotiated; many alternated between resistance and accommodation as conditions changed. Such choices predated modern nationalism and organised liberation movements. They form part of the history of what came to be known as the Southern Question, the central subject of this volume.
The term Southern Question describes the structural crisis that arose from the manner in which Sudan was constructed and governed. The South was incorporated into a single territorial state without equal influence over its political identity, the distribution of power or the allocation of resources.
Successive governments sought to preserve territorial unity, but constitutional arrangements recognising Southern distinctiveness and providing meaningful regional authority remained contested. The conflict concerned the nature of the state: who defined it, whose history informed its identity, how power and resources were distributed, and whether its institutions could accommodate diversity.
Neither Northern Sudan nor Southern Sudan was homogeneous. The North contained diverse ethnic, religious, linguistic, and regional communities, many of which also experienced exclusion, coercive incorporation, or neglect by the central state. The South was composed of numerous peoples with distinct histories, languages, political institutions, and relationships with neighbouring societies.
A common Southern political identity did not erase these differences or descend intact from an ancient unified state. It developed gradually through shared experiences of insecurity, administrative separation, inadequate representation, unequal development, cultural pressure and the recurrent rejection of demands for meaningful self-government.
It was articulated in conferences, churches, schools, political associations, military garrisons, refugee communities, legislative chambers, diplomatic missions, and armed movements. It evolved from demands for protection and fair representation to proposals for federation, regional autonomy, self-determination, and, eventually, independence. These objectives were neither interchangeable nor embraced by every Southern leader at the same moment.
Federation initially represented an effort to preserve Sudanese unity while protecting the South from domination. Separation gained wider support as proposed constitutional safeguards were rejected, diluted or reversed. Southern political programmes changed in response to these experiences and to the narrowing of peaceful alternatives.
Volume I examines this evolution from its historical origins to the collapse of the Addis Ababa settlement in 1983. Independence was one possible outcome, rather than an inevitable destination towards which every earlier event was moving.
Historical actors made decisions without knowing the eventual outcome. Many Southern leaders initially sought a reformed, federal, and plural Sudan rather than a separate state. They argued that unity could be sustained through equality, constitutional protection, religious freedom, regional government, fair participation in national institutions, and respect for cultural diversity.
The failure of these proposals resulted from political choices, institutional weaknesses, competing interests, failures of trust and the recurrent use of coercion in place of constitutional accommodation. Examining the alternatives available at the time helps explain both the conflicts and the difficulty of preserving peace.
The Scope of Volume I
The seven chapters in this volume trace the gradual transformation of localised experiences of resistance into an organised political cause with national, regional, and international dimensions. Chapter One examines the making of Sudan as a territorial state and the incorporation of the South. It begins before the modern boundaries of Sudan had been consolidated and places Southern societies within the wider political worlds of the Nile Valley, the African interior, the Red Sea, and the neighbouring regions of Central and Eastern Africa.
It considers conquest, slavery, commerce, migration, resistance and colonial administration, distinguishing the construction of a territory from the formation of a political community based on consent.
Chapter Two traces the emergence of the Southern cause as a modern political project. It examines the transition from colonial administration to self-government, the 1947 Juba Conference, Southern participation in the constitutional process, the failure to establish adequate safeguards before independence, the Torit disturbances of 1955, and the development of political and armed resistance.
It follows the growth of Southern organisations within Sudan and in exile, including the efforts of political leaders, church figures, students, civil servants, refugees, and former soldiers to present the Southern case to African governments and the wider international community.
Chapter Three examines the movement from fragmented resistance toward military and political consolidation, culminating in the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972. It considers the competing organisations and governmental projects that arose during the first civil war, including the Anyidi Republic, the Azania Liberation Front, and the Nile Provisional Government. Their emergence reflected both the determination to create a political alternative and the difficulty of building unity among dispersed movements operating under severe military, financial, and diplomatic constraints.
The chapter then examines the consolidation of Anyanya under Joseph Lagu, the changing policies of Jaafar Nimeiri’s government, Abel Alier’s role, church mediation, Ethiopian diplomacy and the negotiations that ended the first civil war. The Addis Ababa Agreement resulted from the combined effects of military endurance, political calculation, regional engagement, mediation and a growing recognition that neither side could impose a decisive solution.
Chapter Four turns to the institutions established under the Addis Ababa Agreement. The High Executive Council and the Regional Assembly represented the first sustained experiment in unified Southern self-government within Sudan. They enabled Southern leaders to administer public services, debate development priorities, revive education and commerce, and develop political and administrative experience. The chapter examines this period as an important experience of governance in its own right.
Southern self-government created a political arena in which disagreements could be debated through institutions. It also exposed weaknesses in the settlement: financial dependence, limited constitutional guarantees, unresolved security arrangements, administrative fragility, political rivalry and the continuing power of the presidency in Khartoum.
Chapter Five explores the dismantling of Southern autonomy and the return to armed resistance between 1980 and 1983. It analyses political polarisation within the Southern Region, the controversy over redivision, the political use of internal grievances, the transfer of military units and declining confidence in constitutional remedies. The chapter argues that the weakening of the Addis Ababa settlement led increasing numbers of Southerners to doubt its capacity to protect their political rights, regional unity and physical security.
Chapter Six examines borders, resources and the political economy of Southern Sudan, showing how disputes over economic authority compounded the constitutional tensions described in the preceding chapter.
Regional autonomy depended on authority over land, water, oil, development planning, revenue, infrastructure and trade. The Jonglei Canal, petroleum discoveries, boundary disputes, inadequate transport and public services, and unequal development linked the exercise of political authority to control over resources. The Southern government was expected to undertake reconstruction, provide services and meet rising expectations, although many of the resources and powers required remained under central control.
This imbalance constrained the autonomous government’s performance and shaped competing assessments of its administration. An assessment of its achievements and failures must therefore consider both the decisions made by Southern leaders and the resources and authority available to them.
Chapter Seven places the Southern struggle within its regional and international environment. Before Southern Sudan possessed a foreign ministry, its leaders were already practising diplomacy.
They crossed borders, appealed to African governments, worked through churches, sought the attention of international organisations, and built networks among refugees, students, religious institutions, and political sympathisers. Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Israel, the churches, humanitarian organisations, and other external actors influenced the possibilities available to Southern movements. Their assistance was rarely unconditional, and their policies changed according to domestic interests, regional rivalries, and wider international alignments.
External engagement nevertheless brought the Southern cause to regional and international attention. Across the seven chapters, armed resistance and diplomacy appear as closely connected activities: military developments influenced negotiations, while external relationships shaped the choices available to Southern movements.
Resistance created bargaining power, diplomacy gave political expression to grievances, and negotiation opened possibilities for constitutional settlement. Failures to implement agreements contributed to renewed conflict. The same individuals could serve at different stages as soldiers, political organisers, administrators, negotiators and diplomats.
Sources, Memory, and Historical Interpretation
The history examined in this volume survives in different forms of evidence. Colonial reports, official correspondence, commission findings, conference minutes, constitutional texts, peace agreements, memoirs, academic studies, church records, political declarations, oral histories, and family testimony each preserve part of the past. None is complete, and none is entirely neutral.
Official documents often reveal the assumptions and priorities of the authorities that produced them. Memoirs may preserve indispensable personal knowledge while also reflecting the perspective, memory, and later judgement of their authors. Political publications capture the urgency of a particular moment but may employ language intended to mobilise support.
Oral traditions preserve indigenous names, relationships, journeys, landmarks, motives and meanings that written records frequently neglected, although chronology may shift as memories pass between generations. These sources require different methods of assessment; comparing them can clarify both their contributions and their limitations.
Where documentary evidence is strong, the narrative presents it as established history. Where scholarly interpretations differ, the disagreement is acknowledged. Where colonial officials described African societies through the categories of administration, taxation, security, or presumed tribal character, their reports are treated as evidence of colonial perception as well as evidence concerning events.
Where oral or family testimony contributes indigenous knowledge that cannot be independently verified in every detail, it is identified accordingly rather than presented as uncontested documentary fact. This approach is particularly important when writing the history of societies whose experiences were frequently recorded by outsiders. The archive is richest where the state was active and often weakest where communities maintained systems of authority beyond the reach of the administrative centre.
Silence in the written record does not signify absence from history. At the same time, recovering marginalised memory requires methodological care. Respect for oral testimony must be accompanied by attention to chronology, comparison, context, and corroboration.
The objective is neither to privilege written documents automatically nor to romanticise memory, but to construct the most balanced account possible from the evidence available. This volume also seeks to avoid presenting the history of South Sudan through the experience of one community alone. The histories of the Dinka, Nuer, Shilluk, Azande, Bari, Lotuko, Moru, Anyuak, Acholi, Balanda, Fertit communities, and the many other peoples of the South form part of a wider national history.
Their experiences of state power, resistance, migration, war, trade, religion and political organisation differed. A national narrative must recognise those differences alongside experiences of shared struggle.
The chapters therefore examine how peoples with different memories and experiences came to recognise common political interests and participate in a broader struggle for dignity, equality and self-government.
From the Southern Question to Liberation and Statehood
Volume I ends in 1983, when the dismantling of the political order created at Addis Ababa opened a new phase of conflict. The dissolution of the unified Southern Region, the army crisis, the Bor mutiny, the emergence of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and Army, and the widening confrontation with the government of Sudan transformed the Southern Question.
The question now formed part of a broader critique of the Sudanese state. Demands for Southern rights became intertwined with the SPLM/A’s vision of a transformed Sudan, while the experience of previous agreements continued to influence attitudes towards negotiation, autonomy, unity and self-determination. Subsequent volumes will carry this history forward.
Volume II will examine the second liberation struggle from the formation of the SPLM/A in 1983 to the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005. It will consider the movement’s political vision, Dr John Garang de Mabior’s leadership, internal debates and divisions, relations with Southern communities, the conduct and human cost of the war, and the changing regional and international environment.
It will also examine the roles of Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Eritrea and other neighbouring states, the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, churches, civil society, humanitarian organisations and international partners in the search for peace. Particular attention will be given to the diplomacy that helped bring a protracted war to a negotiated settlement.
Volume III will follow implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement through the Interim Period, the referendum and independence in 2011. It will examine the institutions created after 2005, the restoration of Southern self-government, difficulties in implementing the agreement, Dr John Garang’s death, the leadership transition, the referendum and international recognition of the Republic of South Sudan. Independence will be considered in relation to the political organisation, military struggle, popular endurance, negotiation and diplomacy that made it possible.
It will also examine the expectations carried into independence and the institutional conditions inherited by the new state. Volume IV will address South Sudan as a sovereign country: national institutions, foreign policy, relations with Sudan and neighbouring states, participation in regional and international organisations, internal conflict, peace processes, and economic and humanitarian challenges. It will consider the transition from a liberation movement to the government of a diverse society.
It will also explore how the ideals of liberation have interacted with the demands of reconciliation, institutional accountability, economic reconstruction, diplomatic engagement, national unity, and the renewal of public trust.
The Meaning and Inheritance of the Struggle
Generations endured enslavement, displacement, military violence, political exclusion, disrupted education, economic neglect, famine, exile and the loss of family and community. Military communiqués, constitutional documents and diplomatic records alone cannot convey the human cost of the struggle for liberation.
That cost was borne by combatants and civilians, including widows, orphans, refugees, displaced communities and families that provided food, labour, information and shelter to the movements. Independence depended on political and military leadership as well as the endurance of people whose names rarely entered official histories.
Liberation movements operated under extreme conditions and also experienced disagreements, internal conflicts and errors that require careful assessment. Recognition of the sacrifices made does not remove the need to examine the relationship between stated aims and political practice, including the use of coercion, leadership rivalries and the exercise of power.
Prominent leaders articulated ideas, built organisations, commanded forces, negotiated agreements and represented the Southern cause abroad. Their contributions require examination alongside those of the wider society that sustained the struggle.
Teachers, students, clergy, chiefs, women, traders, workers, farmers, pastoralists, civil servants, refugees, intellectuals, local organisers and families supported resistance across generations. Their experiences are integral to the history of South Sudan.
The struggle also generated diplomatic experience. Southern leaders confronted the risks of military fragmentation, the difficulty of gaining attention without regional support and the vulnerability of agreements that lacked enforceable guarantees. They learned to address African governments, churches, international institutions, humanitarian organisations and foreign publics.
They developed arguments grounded in justice, self-government, religious freedom, cultural recognition, human rights and self-determination. These traditions later informed negotiations over the Comprehensive Peace Agreement and international recognition of South Sudan. They also reflected the central issue examined in this volume: unequal incorporation and the failure of successive political orders to establish durable arrangements for equality, consent and protected self-government.
The rejection or reversal of peaceful proposals contributed to the evolution of Southern resistance. The Addis Ababa Agreement showed that negotiated coexistence was possible, while its dismantling exposed the risks of relying on presidential discretion, personal relationships and temporary political agreement.
A lasting settlement required institutions capable of surviving leadership changes and disagreements over identity, territory, power, security and resources. By 1983, events had shown how political participation could be overridden when safeguards were unenforceable.
Regional autonomy without adequate command of resources remained vulnerable. Military integration without trust could become a source of insecurity. International mediation could help produce an agreement, but external witnesses could not guarantee its implementation.
Southern unity was difficult to construct, yet fragmentation repeatedly weakened the capacity both to negotiate and to govern. These lessons shaped the movement that emerged in 1983. They would influence the course of the following twenty-two years of war and diplomacy, the design of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, and the eventual demand for an internationally supervised referendum.
These experiences raise questions that remain relevant to South Sudan: how to build unity among diverse peoples, distribute power, ensure meaningful participation in government, manage borders and resources, protect agreements, preserve historical memory and translate sovereignty into security, justice, development and human dignity.
Independence established South Sudanese self-government but left questions of citizenship, governance, identity, accountability, reconciliation and national purpose to be addressed within the new state. Understanding the struggle that preceded it can inform both the preservation of historical memory and the responsibilities of government.